Getting Ahead in 2010

It could be that your year-end review process requires you to look ahead and set goals for the next year.  Even if it doesn’t, now is a good time to engage in that process.  Here are three areas to consider as a business valuation professional.

Training.  What’s the next step for you in training?  Is it to begin work on training that leads to a credential?  Or, maybe to complete the process?  Look at the nature of the engagements you have been working on to see whether some specialized training might be useful.  Your boss may have her own ideas about training during 2010, but there’s no need to wait.  Take the initiative to talk about your own ideas.

Don’t overlook the value of offering to deliver training to others in your own shop.  Experienced instructors in BV will confirm that there are few things that make you more competent in a particular area than having to teach it to someone else.

Business development.  No matter where you are in your career, you have to have been asleep not to have noticed that business development skills are key to reaching the top in the valuation profession.  What can you do in 2010 to advance in this area?  Can you write an article?  Make a presentation?  Is it time simply for you to ask if you can accompany the boss on his own business development visits?

If you’re like most BV career professionals we meet, you really enjoy sinking your teeth into the financial analytical aspects of your work.  You put your prospects for long-term career advancement at serious risk, however, by ignoring the need to cultivate your business development capabilities.

Climbing the ladder.  Whatever “rung” you may be on, there’s always a “next step” for you.  What might that be in 2010?  Is it working on a category of engagement that you haven’t yet touched?  Is it handling more parts of an engagement?  Having more client contact?  Supervising others?  A conversation with your supervisor would yield other ideas.  There may well be assignments that he would love to be able to hand to you, but wasn’t sure whether you were eager to take them on.

You may be among the many who will be happy to see 2009 in the rear-view mirror.  Nothing will propel you forward, faster, than to put your focus on the coming year and how you can make it your best year, yet.