A Slippery Slope

I recently had the pleasure of listening to Brian Tracy conduct a teleconference call on the subject of leadership. During his presentation, he suggested that there are two types of entrepreneurs: those that are constantly upgrading their knowledge and skills and striving to move forward and those that are coasting.  As he finished this statement, he reminded listeners that there is only one direction in which you coast.  It occurred to me that not only do you coast downhill but you would also be going backwards!

The above reminds me of the following quote from John Kenneth Galbraith:

“People are the common denominator for progress.  No progress is possible with unimproved people”

In my past corporate life, the funds needed to upgrade our knowledge and skills frequently seemed to be a discretionary line item in our budget.  I don’t recall that much energy went into discussing the skills and knowledge that our organization would need to possess in the future.  Perhaps there was a product bias that caused us to believe that our product portfolio was strong and that it was the primary source of our differentiation.  I don’t know.

With the benefit of hindsight, I would argue that a strong link must be made between training and the business objective of achieving sustainable differentiation between you and your competition.  The source of differentiation is people based and if you subscribe to Galbraith’s statement about progress, then you need to think carefully about the training required in your organization.

After all, if coasting downhill isn’t frightening enough, try doing it backwards!

Hunt or Be Hunted

The top 20% of salespeople earn 80% of the money.  But, we need to remember that the top 20% of salespeople started out in the bottom 20% of the selling population.  Those at the top do the hunting, while those at the bottom are hunted.

Selling consists of a stepwise process that can be learned by anyone who has the motivation to improve his or her selling results.  I had a public school teacher who was fond of saying “repetition for emphasis”.  Well, the process of learning new ideas; practicing them; getting customer feedback and then repeating the process would have my former teacher nodding her head in agreement.

The learning cycle normally takes one from unconscious incompetence (don’t know what we don’t know) to unconscious competence (know it instinctively).  Your selling results will track this learning cycle.  So, if we want to be in the top 20% of salespeople in our particular field, we need to be sufficiently motivated to be hunters rather than the hunted.

FocalPoint Coaching, in conjunction with Brian Tracy International, have condensed the best sales teaching materials of Brian Tracy into an impactful one day, video based training program.  Brian has trained more than two million sales professionals over the past 32 years and now his understanding and insights are available through the Sales Success Intensive (SSI) training program.  I have been certified to facilitate this program and you can be on your way to significantly improved sales results if you participate in this training program.  View my endorsement from Brian Tracy here. 

Contact me to learn when the next SSI program is scheduled.