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Your learning/self-improvement process is probably obsolete

Your learning/self-improvement process is probably obsolete

Anyone who has been successful in the sales game is a good student.  To solve our customers' problems, we need to know - therefore we first need to learn - more than they do about not only the problems, but also the solutions.  But my goodness... new ideas, technologies and applications are flooding into our world faster than ever.  Something's gotta' give.  We need to change the way we learn.

I hate to use the old three-legged stool analogy yet again, but if fits anywhere, if it fits with regard to constantly and rapidly increasing our personal knowledge and understanding.  A little research reveals that virtually all of us use a two legged approach to learning.  We first absorb information from web pages, books, blogs, podcasts, other people, etc., then roll that information around in our brains, combine it with what's already there then move to the second leg, apply.  Next we observe what happens, absorb yet more information from the results produced and continue on with the two-step learning process.

Not good enough!

One of Albert Einstein's pithier comments was, "You don't really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother."  Think about that and recognize that you are not very good at teaching many of the things you are quite good at doing.  Why is that?

Quite simply, it's because you don't really understand.  Now - think about things that you can not only do well, but can also teach well.  Again, understanding is the difference maker.  So how can we deepen our understanding?

The answer is contribute.  There is absolutely no better way to learn something than to be put in the position of needing to teach it to someone else.  There is absolutely no better way to teach something than to first put it down in writing.  If you don't believe me, call grandma right now and teach her how to articulate the value proposition you used for your last really big sale.

After apologizing to grandma for confusing the daylights out of her, take the time to write down the customer's "before" and "after" situations and why and by how much "after" is better.  Write out that winning value proposition.  Write-down specifically how it highlights the key improvements made to the customer situation.  Keep it all to 150 or so words.  Revise and rewrite it at least two or three times. 

Assuming your grandma is still speaking to you, try teaching her again how to articulate your value proposition.  Pretty amazing difference, huh?

Don't have time to expend that much effort?  Well, of course you don't.  Not for everything...  But what about those dozen or so things that are fundamentally critical to your success?  To state the obvious, you simply cannot afford to not deeply and thoroughly understand those things.  For them, absorb/apply only doesn't cut it.  So do it!  Contribute/Absorb/Apply!

Better yet, after you write it - publish it and invite others to comment on it.  You can publish it easily at the unique website of the Sales Knowledge Xchange (saleskx.org).  (Think of it as the Wikipedia for sales and sales management.)

It's a brave new world out there, folks.  To continue our personal success, each of us needs to adopt this 21st-century model for learning.





Your learningselfimprovement process is probably obsolete - To learn more about this author, visit Todd Youngblood's Website.

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Kim Castle
With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website

Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

Dianne Crampton

Dianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here.

Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009.  Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010.  To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here.

- Visit Dianne Crampton's Website


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Todd Youngblood
(Visit Todd's Website) Todd Youngblood is passionate about sales productivity. His 30+ year career in Executive Management, Sales, Marketing and Consulting has focused on selling more, better, cheaper and faster. He began his career in 1976 as a Marketing Representative with the IBM Corporation and for fifteen years progressed through a wide variety of field and staff assignments. He then founded and operated an Information Technology Outsourcing firm providing Software Development and Maintenance Services. In 1994, he joined an electronic commerce firm serving the insurance and healthcare industries, as Vice President of Sales & Marketing. He established The YPS Group, Inc. in 1999 based on his years of experience in Sales Process Engineering � that is, combining creativity and discipline in the design, implementation and use of work processes for highly effective sales teams. Todd has worked extensively with firms in the Distribution, Manufacturing, Insurance, Services, and Telecommunications industries. He is the author of two sales management books, The Dolphin And The Cow and Think About It� He is married, has two daughters, enjoys cycling, is a second degree black belt in Choi Kwang Do and serves on the board of the Cobb Symphony Orchestra.

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