Show notes
Some people say that education is never wasted. I completely disagree. My feeling is that unapplied education may be the biggest waste of all. That's why the LAIR Method, our 4 step success cycle is so powerful
David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today co-host Chris Templeton and I will be talking about education, specifically education designed to help businesses sell better and how that education is always wasted unless it's being applied. Welcome Chris!
Chris: Hi David. This is a fascinating point and it's interesting that you would take a well-known phrase like education has never wasted and completely turn it on its head. Are you just trying to be provocative?
David: No, not at all. I think the reason that I'm saying it is because I really believe it. Every time I heard that expression, even as a child, I always questioned it. I'm like, what do you mean education is never wasted? It seems to me that if you learn something that you never ever use, then that's kind of a waste. I think it's part of the reason why as a child there were some classes that I just couldn't get into because I felt like I was never going to use this information. Now, I'm not suggesting that people use that as an excuse not to learn stuff. On the contrary, what I'm saying is that if you're learning something, particularly something that's designed to help you to sell better or improve your business or improve your life, then definitely learn it to the best of your ability, but make sure that you implement it as well.
Chris: It's a great, great point. If we're not applying it, there's just not a whole lot of point in it is there?
David: None that I can see.
Chris: So rather than learning what to do, a lot of salespeople simply wing it. What's the likelihood of that working? I mean, that will work won’t it?
David: Well it might, but it's pretty much slim to none. Out of a hundred salespeople who wing it. There might be a small percentage who may do great with it. It's entirely possible, but the people who actually are taught: what to do, how to do it, who to approach, how to approach them, what to say, how to say it - have a much better likelihood of success because they're not trying to reinvent the wheel. And that's where, particularly in a career like sales, if you don't take the time to learn how to do it right, you're going to spend many months or years figuring it out and essentially blowing it on high quality prospects. If you're in front of a good quality prospect and you don't know what to say and you're just winging it and saying the wrong things, then you can spend a long time getting it wrong. Not selling a lot of stuff, giving your company a black eye and really not valuing the time of the person you're interacting with.
Chris: Well, it's interesting that you say that because almost the underlying assumption is that I'm a sales guy and I ought to be doing this on my own; and I'll betcha you think that managers probably should be doing more to help their salespeople be better sales people?
David: Well, I think it's certainly helpful if you are a sales manager and you have the salespeople under you, then yes, certainly helping the salespeople you have should be a critical and important part of your job. And a lot of sales managers are good at what they do and they really help their sales people to grow. There are some who sell as well and sometimes there's a bit of a competition there and they always want to sort of show how they're better than the people they work with. That sort of dynamic is rarely good in sales, but when you get a sales manager who really understands that his or her job is to help the people that they're working with to become better at it and to establish rapport with more high quality prospects and to close those sales effectively. And when that person does everything they can to impart that knowledge on the salespeople, then everybody wins. The company wins, the sales manager wins because they look good to the boss, the sales person wins, and it's just all around a far better approach.
Chris: So what is it that you've seen that’s made it clear for you that sales managers need to be doing more?
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David: Well, I do a lot of work in the print and promotional products industry. In fact, the topic of our next podcast is very closely related to this. We're going to be talking about recruiting new salespeople instead of training the ones you have. And that's something that I've seen a lot, particularly in the promotional products industry where a lot of the focus is on bringing in new salespeople as opposed to helping or training the ones that they have. And again, we're going to be talking about that next time so we don't want to get too deeply into it now, but it certainly serves as evidence that there are some companies whose focus is essentially wrong because they're not really out to help the people who are already with them, the ones who are currently generating 100% of their sales to date.
Chris: Right. I've had plenty of experience with sales and sales management and I just think that your bringing this to the front in terms of sales managers, there's so much more you can do to help your salespeople to be better. And there's ways to do it that they'll appreciate. And I think somehow that gets lost in the translation. And a lot of times what we end up with is salespeople that are trying to do it their way, winging it or they're trying to do it your way and don't feel comfortable. And there's someplace in between. And I think that's where the sales manager fills in when they're doing it. Right, wouldn't you say?
David: Yeah, that's a great point because when a sales manager tries to impose his or her views onto the sales person about this is how you have to do it. If there's not a comfort level for that salesperson saying those things or presenting it in that way, then the likelihood of them being successful with it is not good. So there's a huge difference between saying, okay, here's some of the points you need to cover. And here's word for word what I want you to say. Two completely different things.
Chris: Yeah, really important. Okay, so let's talk about the Four Step Success Cycle. What is it and how does it ensure that the education of a salesperson is received and not wasted?
David: The Four Step Success Cycle is really about how does a salesperson learn something and very often, if they are being trained – (in other words, if the business or if the salesperson is somehow managing to get some sort of training on how to do things better) a lot of times what happens is there'll be exposed to some sort of lesson, right? They'll read a book or they'll listen to audio or they'll watch a video or they'll listen to a podcast like this and they're being exposed to a message. And sometimes what happens is they listen to that message or they read that message and they say, oh, okay, I already knew that. Or yeah, that sounds good, but I don't know if that's for me. Right? So instead of considering how they can actually use and monetize that information, it sort of goes in one ear and out the other.
And if they've heard it before - and there's some people in sales who feel like if I've heard something before, then I don't need this. And the challenge I think is not to think in terms of, have I heard this before? It's "am I implementing this" and "am I implementing it as well as it can be implemented?" "Am I implementing it better than my competition?" Right? Those are the types of things that are going to be more helpful than simply saying, "oh yeah, I already know that." So the first step is to learn what you need to know. The second step after you learn what you need to know is to ask questions about anything you don't understand. So if you're learning something new, if it's from your sales manager, whatever, they explain something. If there are things you don't understand, be sure to ask the questions as soon as possible after you learn it so that you can feel comfortable enough with it that you can at least test it out. You can at least try it. You can start to implement it to try to get some results. So that would be the second thing. We learn what we need to know. We ask questions about anything we don't understand.
Then the third thing is that we implement the strategy as soon as possible. So you learn something, you ask the questions, and then you implement it as quickly as possible after that. Because, you're going to want to find the pitfalls. You're going to want to see what works about it and what doesn’t and what do I need to change or adapt to make it work better next time. And so that brings us to the fourth step, which is to review your results. So after you've implemented it, you want to review your results and say, how did that go? Was that a total disaster or was it really good? Or was it kind of okay? And then when you review your results, either with your sales manager or by yourself or with somebody that you trust, then you can do a post implementation diagnostic. It's a lot of big words in a row, but you can do a diagnostic afterwards to determine what went right, what went wrong, and what can I tweak or change around so that the next time I do this, it's likely to be more effective for me. So those are the four steps of the success cycle when it comes to actually being able to implement and have something be successful after you've learned it.
Chris: When I look at your Four Step Success Cycle,