Here is a new strategy for the new year for all of you sales slackers: If you can't meet your sales targets, just blame the U.S. Looking back at the news from last year, you will be joining some well-publicized company.

• In 2011, The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the US for inciting riots. In listening to the voices of the protesters, it seems that there was more to it than that.
• In 2011, many government officials in the EU seemed to point the finger at the US for their own financial problems. Later in the year, it seemed like there might be more to it than that.
• And now, on December 8, 2011, Vladamir Putin has blamed the US for inciting discontent in Russia, after elections in which observers believe that Putins party used some tricks to help get ahead.

Now I'm not going to take a position on whether or not the U.S. was indeed behind some or all of this. That's not the point here. And besides, after watching enough political and spy thrillers to choke a horse, I can believe that it is possible that the U.S. was behind all of these unrest events. Did you see the stuff that the CIA could do in the Bourne Trilogy? Wow!

But let's try to get at least a little bit real:

• In Iran, citizens have been oppressed for years.
• In the EU, systematic problems and bank risk taking all their own was at least in part responsible for the Euro crisis. At least in part.
• And in Russia, election observers seem pretty confident that something was not quite OK with the elections.

But wait, this is a sales blog - where is the connection? It is about excuses. In all of the examples above, the leader or leaders did not act in good faith or with adequate foresight, and when the proverbial sh*t hit the proverbial fan, the leader(s) chose to try blaming some outside circumstance for the state of affairs that their own poor performance seems to have caused.

As a salesperson, there are always plenty of things that you can blame for your lack of results. The economy. The competition. etc. You might even be right, that one of these external things had something to do with your inability to hit your targets.

However, if your goal is to excel, then what makes the most sense is to look inside. Irrespective of outside influences, what can YOU do to improve things. This perspective will move your career forward. There will still be bumps, many of which will not be entirely your fault, but you need to move forward nonetheless.

What kind of a world do you think we would have if politicians (and even those who riot against them in the streets) took a more responsible perspective about honesty and personal responsibility such as this?