In a Routine Performance Rut? You’re Not Alone, and There’s a Way Out
Introduction: Men and women providing various professional services sense when they’re in a performance rut. Where it feels as though the days all bleed into a single repetition of the same run-of-the-mill cloud of experiences: a workplace rendition of déjà vu gone live the moment they step through the door. Makes it exasperating at times, just to stay focused. Maybe they catch themselves daydreaming more often in the middle of a routine procedure. Or getting easily distracted by the goings-on all around them, making it infuriating and hard to stay on task at times. Or worse, they get disrupted by an urgent request, or discussion with a coworker, only to return to their current task, irksomely lost over where they’d left off. As if these occurrences weren’t vexing enough, it later becomes clear that they’ve inadvertently caused an error. A blunder at the worst possible time. A costly one at that.
A huge mistake many salespeople make (I’ve caught myself doing this many times), is attempting to persuade our prospect to buy what “we” like without considering what “they” like. 
I think everybody needs to know “who is the best customer for me?” Here’s how you can generate a description of that individual.
At a Chamber of Commerce Business Card Exchange several years ago a well-dress woman walked up to me, business card in hand and, in perfect form held it in both hands in front of me, gesturing for me to take it.
Competence goes beyond having a specific expertise. It certainly means being knowledgeable and skillful in your field. But it also means possessing a problem-solving ability that goes beyond your own specialty. If you don’t know the answer, or how to fix the problem, with competence as an ability, you know how to go about getting someone who does. Competence means having a can-do attitude and following through on it.