It’s just a start
This may seem ironic and possibly self-defeating coming from someone who makes a living selling training to organizations, but if you’re in sales and depend on your employer to be the principal source of your sales education, you may be in serious trouble.
You can be a good salesperson with the training you get—maybe even very good. But you can’t be exceptional, and you definitely can’t be great, if you don’t take charge of your own education and lifelong learning. It’s pretty simple: if you’re getting training that your employer provides, so is everyone else.
I had an interesting discussion with Anthony Iannarino yesterday, and coincidentally his article this morning reinforced an idea that came into my mind during that discussion. We were talking about our shared passion for military history, and one of the points that came out of our talk is that most if not all of the great generals and leaders were self-taught. Marshall and Eisenhower and Patton were sent to professional schools throughout their careers, but they also read incessantly, and they studied military history, taking careful notes, visiting battlefields to see for themselves how and why those who came before them made the decisions that they did.
Salespeople also need to study their craft and their profession. When was the last time you read a sales book? If it was recently, don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. When was the last time you took careful notes, maybe compared what you read to a different book, and applied what you learned? And, it’s really not about just sales books. When was the last time you read a business book, or any other book that expanded your horizons just a little bit, maybe helped you to spot a new way to approach a particular sales opportunity?
When you attend a training class, does your workbook join all the others you have packed away somewhere gathering dust, or do you personally take charge of applying one or two or more nuggets? If you paid for a golf lesson, you know it would be wasted if you didn’t go out and practice the new skill immediately and consistently, yet so many salespeople treat the training they get as an event that is over when it is over.
We’re told the best salespeople bring fresh insights to their customers. Guess what: if everyone is getting the same training in those same ideas, how fresh are your insights going to be?
What does self-education do for you? It can make you better at your current position, but what it really does is prepare you for higher positions. It will give you the knowledge and confidence to interact with higher level people in the customer’s organization, or even in your own. It will mark you out for advancement. In the 1890s, British military officers posted to India led a relaxed life: a little training in the morning, polo in the late afternoons, and alcohol and naps during the hottest hours of the day. Except for one young subaltern, a recent graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Knowing that his education was woefully deficient, the young officer sent his mother a shopping list of books, books which he studied during those afternoon hours when everyone else was boozing or sleeping. He didn’t let his studies get in the way of everything else that mattered; he was one of the stars of his regiment’s polo team, and he certainly was not a teetotaler, but Winston Churchill had other plans for his life, and he knew that he had to take charge of his own education if he was to rise above his ordinary career prospects.
Of course, the 1890s were different than today. At that time, the world was about to change dramatically in ways that people could not foresee. Change was the order of the day, although folks back then really did not know what was about to hit them. Today, change is still the order of the day, and the only difference is that we know that next year, or 10 years from now will be very different than today. So, we have even less excuse to avoid taking responsibility for our own education. As Tom Friedman says in today’s New York Times column, in today’s hyperconnected world, “…the old average is over.” Things you take for granted become obsolete faster, so what you learn early in your life and career is not enough to last your lifetime.
Does self-education matter? Hell, yes, it does! When everyone else has great products and slick materials, the only differentiator that you can control is your knowledge and skill, and that’s the differentiator that customers will pay to get. What are you doing to add value to yourself and your customers?
Every year at this time, millions of people solemnly resolve to improve something about their lives in some way, and the vast majority of those resolutions quickly fail. There are many who tell us that making new year’s resolutions is futile, so why try? After all, failure is almost guaranteed, so making resolutions is a waste of time at best and potentially harmful to your self-esteem.
Two of the most healthy states of mind that anyone can have are gratitude and optimism. We already have a national holiday specifically dedicated to gratitude,so why not have one set aside for optimism? In these pessimistic days, there’s a general sense that our best days are behind us, and that the future holds only danger, decline and despair. I don’t believe this is true for us as a nation, and you should never ever believe it is true for yourself personally.
In 1967, Martin Seligman and colleagues conducted experiments with dogs, in which some were repeatedly subjected to electric shocks from which they could not escape regardless of what levers they pressed. Most of those dogs learned to be helpless, so that in an ensuing experiment in which they could escape the shocks by leaping a low partition, they simply lay down and whined. I find it horrifying that anyone would do something like that to a dog, but how many times to people do something similar to themselves? People can also learn to be helpless. They try something, it doesn’t work, they listen to others who tell them it’s futile to keep trying, and they give up, even when there may only be a low partition keeping them from where they want to be.
The problem with this type of pessimism is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy—that low partition may as well be ten feet high.
This is not a recommendation for uninformed or naïve optimism. Admiral James Stockdale, who survived seven years of brutal captivity in North Vietnam, told author Jim Collins that the ones who did not survive that ordeal were the optimists, who thought they would be out by a certain date, and died of a broken heart when it did not happen. Stockdale said:
“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
You should make resolutions fully expecting that they will be difficult to fulfill, so when the inevitable difficulties come up you will be mentally prepared. But never let those difficulties keep you from trying.
Sure, millions of people resolve to lose weight or quit smoking, and millions fail. But millions succeed, and the vast majority of those failed numerous times before they succeeded. Don’t let the small likelihood of success turn into the certainty of failure before you even begin. Resolve.
Let’s make New Year’s Day Optimism Day.
“And they said you’d never make it…”
That’s a comment my daughter’s new co-worker told her when she told him she had majored in art history. Mackenzie has just begun a terrific new job in marketing for a prestigious firm, having been selected out of a large pool of applicants after an intensive interview process, and her choice of college major has been a source of comment and bemusement from some of those she has met.
Her first week on the job, a VP learned about her major, and said, “tell me about that…” Mackenzie told her how her course of study required her to absorb large amounts of ambiguous detail, grasp its meaning and think, speak and write cogently and convincingly about it. She also explained how artists were the original marketers. Before the modern era, very few people could read or write, so the ruling powers used art as their way of communicating with the masses to polish their image, express their values, etc.
After she finished explaining, the VP smiled and said, “It’s all in the way you spin it.”
Here’s the point for young adults choosing their path in life: Following your passion is a wonderful thing—as long as you can convince someone to pay you for that passion. Mackenzie got to spend her college years studying a topic that is fascinating to her and that will enrich her experiences for the rest of her life. But she also had the ability to analyze her skill set and express it in terms that a potential employer would find valuable.
As I’ve stressed repeatedly in this blog, if you can think, communicate and sell, there is no limit to what you can do.
You think you’re motivated? Meet Ahmad Jan Ali.
It takes motivation for any kid to make it through college and then to get a job in a Congressman’s office. But what if that kid first has to learn English without any help, risk his life repeatedly, and then make it through college in a foreign country despite never having gone past sixth grade?
Ahmad was born in Afghanistan and went to a school with no windows, no desks, paper or pencils—and one textbook that the dozen or so students took turns using. At the age of 12 his family fled from the Taliban to Iran, where Ahmad was not allowed to attend school. He decided he wanted to learn English, and talked his parents into allowing him to quit work to devote himself to the task. He bought 150 cassette tapes containing university lectures and political speeches, and studied eight hours a day, holding imaginary conversations with lamps and chairs, and imitating George Bush.
Of course, since he had no one to actually talk to, he didn’t know if his English was actually any good, until his family returned to Afghanistan and he approached some American soldiers. When they heard him, they asked him how long he had lived in the States. In one article, Ahmad said: “I felt like I was hit by an asteroid. That’s how empowering that was. I realized right then that hard work pays off.” (The article is fascinating. Go ahead and read it; I’ll wait.)
He became an interpreter for the troops and regularly risked his life on combat missions and negotiations with local leaders. In 2007, he jumped at the chance to take advantage of a visa program for interpreters, although he first had to travel to Pakistan, evading Taliban patrols, to get the necessary papers. He moved to Oregon and lived in the home of Col. Bob Elliott, enrolled in the local community college and eventually graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a degree in international affairs. He now lives in DC and works in the office of US Representative Greg Walden.
It’s easy to write about motivation from the safety and comfort of an American middle-class life, so occasionally it’s useful to remind ourselves that many people face far greater obstacles than we do just to achieve what we already take for granted.
In a story written in the Bend Bulletin[1], Ahmad is quoted as saying: “I want to have a positive impact on what is going on.”
I would say he already has.
[1] This quote is taken from an excellent article about Ahmad in yesterday’s Bend Bulletin, but apparently it is only accessible to subscribers.
