How do I effectively learn new skills and practices?

The Theory Segment

Stage 1: Unawareness. You are completely unaware that there is a skill to be learned. For example, a novice sales rep might be making cold calls without realizing that her accent is making it difficult for customers to understand what she’s saying.
Stage 2: Awareness. You realize that something isn’t working. For example, that novice rep may notice that her hit rate on the cold-calls is much lower than the other people working in that office. This causes her to ask colleagues and her sales manager for suggestions.
Stage 3: Clarification. You understand what you need to do differently. For example, that novice rep signs up for a class that will improve her diction and make it more understandable to the target customer base.
The Practice Segment

Stage 4: Awkwardness. You attempt the new behavior and find it difficult. For example, the novice attempts to apply the skills learned in the class and speak without the debilitating accent. She finds that it’s hard and exhausting to hold a conversation without slipping into the old accent. WARNING: Because the new behavior seems awkward at this stage, it’s easy to give up, conclude that the new behavior is “not right for you,” or simply too much bother to pursue. This is where people who aren’t really committed fail at follow-through.
Stage 5: Familiarity. The new behavior is easier but still not automatic. For example, the novice finds that she can now hold a conversation in the new accent without fumbling or falling into the old accent. Practicing the new skill is no longer a burden. WARNING: Once a new behavior seems easy, you’ll be tempted to neglect practicing it. In most cases, people think that they’ve mastered the skill and can move on. But, in fact, the skill is not yet automatic, which means that, without practice and ongoing attention, you will quickly slip back into the previous behavior. This is where people who are committed (but are unaware of how the human brain works) fail at follow-through.
Stage 6: Automatic. You no longer think about the behavior but simply do it. For example, the novice now finds that talking in the new accent seems more natural than the old accent. In fact, it takes a conscious decision to speak in the old accent. At this point, the brain has been reprogrammed so that the new behavior no longer needs monitoring or specific practice sessions. It’s now like “riding a bike” - a lifelong skill that you’ll never forget.
Reaching stage 6, where the new skill, behavior or habit becomes automatic, requires constant and consistent practice. The amount of time varies according to the complexity of the behavior and the degree to which the previous behavior is ingrained, though.

For example, changing a habitual negative thought (like “I’m not that good with people”) to a positive alternative (like “people really like me when they get to know me”) can be accomplished in less than two weeks, simply through five minutes of daily affirmations. By contrast, changing something major, like your eating habits, can take a commitment of an hour or more a day for six months to a year. (This is, by the way, why most dieters regain whatever weight they lose.)

If you don’t practice the new skill until you reach stage 6, so the change in behavior never becomes automatic. And that requires single-minded focus. Unfortunately, that focus is difficult to achieve. I explain why (and how to achieve that focus)
The focus required to achieve Stage 6 in today’s business world for two reasons. The first is distraction. Modern working life is full of interruptions constantly vying for your attention.

The second focus-killer is over-commitment. Most people who are committed to improving their lives often attempt to make changes in multiple areas, makes it difficult or impossible to focus on single one change long enough to reach stage 6.

For example, how many times have you heard yourself (or somebody else) say something like: “Starting tomorrow, every day I’m going to run three miles, lift weights, drink eight glasses of water, stop smoking, stop drinking coffee, and eat 50 percent less fat.” While those are all laudable goals, the likelihood that you’ll be keep up that regimen for more than a few days (let alone reach stage 6 on any element of the regimen) is practically nil.

To overcome distraction, you must set aside a very small amount of time each day - hopefully less than ten minutes to focus on the change in behavior that you seek. More time than that, and it’s likely that other priorities will intrude.

To overcome over-commitment, pick a single behavior that you wish to change, and then focus on that until it becomes automatic. Then move to the next.

Over time, your list of automatic skills will far exceed what you would ever been able to achieve through the scattershot “crash course” that’s the mainstay of sales training and self-improvement.

BTW, don’t worry that focusing on one thing will make everything else fall apart. While you focus on this one thing, the other automatic behaviors that you’ve already acquired will continue to function much the same way as before.

In other words, if you can already do what it takes to sell, focusing on improving a single sales skill won’t cause the rest of your skills to disappear.

READERS: How does Wingard’s process square with your personal experience? It matches mine perfectly

What do I need to know in B2B selling?

Before the Sale:

#1: Focus on top prospects and contact them frequently.
#2: Research prospects prior to each meeting.
#3: Commit time and energy to making the sale.
#4: Truly desire to help the prospect.
#5: Transcend the need to make the sale.
During the Sale:

#6: Listen more than you talk.
#7: Cultivate insider “coaches” to learn requirements.
#8: Communicate unique value.
#9: Interface well with your support staff.
#10: Solve problems as a consultant.
#11: Meet deadlines for customer milestones.
#12: Recognize when a sale is not going to happen.
#13: Recognize when the prospect is ready to buy.
After the Sale:

#14: Get referrals and follow up on them.
#15: Appreciate and thank the customer.
#16: Express thanks towards those who helped.
#17: Create a long-term relationship.
Throughout:

#18: Keep a sense of proportion.

What are the traits of a succesful leader and manager?

1.Exhibit flawless work ethic. Lead by example. If you screw around, they’ll emulate you. Likewise, if you’re seriously hard-working, they’ll seek your approval by doing the same.
2.Indoctrinate them with the big picture. Everybody wants to be a part of something useful. Make the work important to them by telling them why it’s important to others.
3.Set goals and hold them accountable. Goal setting in most companies is ineffective. It’s either too top down, too bottom up, or there’s little or no follow-up. Strike a balance somewhere in the middle. Where is different for each situation.
4.Provide genuine, real-time feedback, good and bad, no BS. Ask for the same from them. This is one of the hardest things for any manager to do, especially the negative stuff.
5.Promote their accomplishments and take the heat for their failures. They need to know you’ve got their back.
6.Provide the tools they need to be effective; keep management off their backs; otherwise, get out of the way.
7.Give them as much responsibility as they can handle, no more, no less. That’s sort of tricky if you have a big group because it’s really an individual thing.
8.Communicate what’s going on as openly as you can within reason and without unduly burdening them with confidential information they don’t need to know.
9.Give them personal time to get important things done. We’re not talking about running errands, but important stuff that’s got to be done 9 to 5 like doctor’s appointments.
10.Have some empathy, humility, and a sense of humor. It’ll go a long way. Mostly, be yourself. No jokes about sociopaths; they probably don’t read management blogs anyway.

Insight - How do I stay effective with administartive tasks?

Set aside 1 hour everyday, just before or just after lunch, for administerative task. - Online banking, responding to landlord, paying bills, ..

Fit in as many of these in that hour as possible.

When the hour stops yoou will feel a. releived that you have gotten them of your mind and b. enthused that you have achieved so much in such little time.

Then you can get back to the fun stull.

THE IMPACTFUL COMMUNICATION TEMPLATE

Golden Rule: Alaways be looking for THE FLIP
- Before I answer, for what reasons is that important to you?
- Before I kick-off, What areas would you specifically like me to cover?
- So that I make best use of time, tell me, what are you interested in seeing specifically?

P.O.A.E.M - Problem.Our Offering.Advantage it brings.Example.Metrics

RHYTHM IS KEY. TO SOUNDING INTERESTING & MAINTAINING FLOW.
--- THE THING ---
Such _____ type experiences.
Such a _____ type activity.

--- INTRO DEMO / PRESENTATION ---
If I leave you with one big idea/key message let it be this: ____________.
Let me start off by telling you a tale.

I'm looking forward to today's session. Let me tell you why ___________.
Today I want to talk to you about________.
Today we are going to cover _________.
We are going to start out today by looking at ______ then ___________.
Before we get started, a quick show of hands _____. I have to assume, some people just don't like raising their hands.


--- REPLACE EH/UHM ---
It's like this ______.
Let me break it down for you________.
Having said that ___________.
With that in mind let me __________.
How should I say _______.
You see _______.
You know ______.
I mean _______.
now _____.
so _____.
Look _____.
Listen ____.
Right?

--- INTRO IDEAS ---
There are 3 key messages we want to communicate. Firstly,_______. This is achieved by _______.


--- HEY PRINCIPLE ---
What we can do is say, "Hey, why don't we just..."
And your customers may be like, "Hey,..."
The solution says, "Hey, I can extract the people, places, dates..."

---DO I...IS IT---
Do, I...Is, it
- DO I care if _________. I'll be honest, no. I can tell you why.
- DO I believe ___________. Yes, and here's why ________.
- IS IT a good move to __. Yes. And I can tell you why _______.
- IS IT the right move. Let's find out __.

---PRIMING---
Let me give you some context __________.
Often, Have people ask me, "so tell me", what is a search driven experience all about __________?
So, How does ____.
So, What does ______.
So, Why does ______.
Why is this important you may be asking yourself.
Let's now talk abit about ______.
A second key pillar I'd like to talk about is ______.
With that in mind, let's look at _____.
Picture for a moment __________.
Cast your mind back for a mement to _____.
If I can just take you back to ______.
Let me break it down for you __________.
So, here is the deal _________.
We know there are a few ways RIGHT?
WELL, HERE IS THE PROBLEM WITH THAT THINKING __________.

Before I do that, just let me first ____.
Let me tell you how _____.
Let me tell you why ____.
It's like this _______.
Let me break it down for you _______.

Here's what I have been thinking? _______________.
Let me share for you my thoughts on this ____________.
Here's what I think. In my opinion ___________.
Let me break it down for you _____________.
There are a couple of points here. 1. ___________.

The key take aware here being _________.

---QUESTIONS ---




Let me rephrase the question _____________.

Would it be fair to say that ___________.



--- RESPONDING ---
So, [Repeat question] . Let me tell you how _____.
I agree that is a very important question.
Let me tell you how we have been thinking around that ___________.
I'll tell you what I bet _______.
Good question. Here's how I have been thinking around this.
Let me break it down for you.
There are several elements. Firstly, _________.
But, what I will say is this ______.
Let me park that off for now. _. And we'll touch on that later in the presentation.

I'll take you thru that in a moment. First, I'd like to ______.
Before I answer. What exactly are you looking to achieve?
Firstly. Can you explain why that is of importance to you?



--- BOUNCING OFF LISTENER(s) ---
Ok? Right?
Do you see what I mean?
How many of you are familiar with ____?
Is this making sense? Am I making sense?
Are you still with me?
Are we still on the same page?
Any questions on this? I know when i first saw this I was pretty confused ______.
Would I be right insaying that?

You know that feeling when ______?
You know the pain of having to ___?

Would that be useful to you?
Would that be of interest to you?

So, what we are actually doing here is. How cool is that? huh?
It gets even better. Watch this ______.

Any questions on that_____?
I see eyes glazing over____. Any questions so far _________?

Can you see the benefit of using this in your organisation?
How are you going about achieving this today?

--- ICE BREAKERS ---
If I can recall my slide notes correctly.
You are probably thinking __[JK].
Let me just hit pause for a second.
Let me juckly rewind/fast forward and show you _____.
That takes us to __.
That segweys nicely onto my next slide.
We went a little bit off script there _____.
I like to call them _______.

--- GIVING CONTEXT ---
Let me tell you how I got there ________.
First, let me take a moment to put it into context for you _______.
Well, Let me tell you why ____.

--- HIGHLIGHTING ----
There are a few things I want to CALL OUT before we go any further...
What I can now do is ___________.
I can then start to __________ the benefit of thi is ____________.
The key take aways here being A) B).
I'll repeat this again as this is very important.
One of the key messages I want you to take home is this.
One of the things I want you to take away _____.
This is really important.
Let me just highlight this quickly.
Let me just turn the spotlights on X for a moment.
Its worth mentioning that ______.
What you will notice here is ____.
Let me draw your attention to _____.
So, what I am going to do now is ________.
I'm really excited about this next feature and I'll tell you why ______.
This is really cool. This is brilliant.
You may be familiar with ______. Now contrast that with what you are about to see ____.
I really want to land this.
I really want to fire this home.
There are a few points worth mentioning here.
There is a list here but I'm nt going to iterate thru it. I will though highlight a few key areas. Firstly, _____.



--- EXPLAIN REASONING ---
Here are the evaluation/success criteria I found important _______.Based on these, I concluded that option A would be the best approach ________.

I know last week I said X , but my position has changed to Y. There are several reasons. Let me tell you why _________________.


Let me tell you why. Firstly, _________.
There is an alternative view. Let me share it with you ______.
Here's how it is _______________.
I can walk us thru this in the following slides _______.

--- ANECDOTES ---
Let me give you an example. Now though this customer may appear much larger you are similar in that _______.
It reminds me of a customer we met _____.
We have seen this before, _________.
They were like "Hey, we can't.."
They will say "Look, Its like this..."
We said to ourselves "Wait a second..."
We often get the question from customers - [voice] "so, how come ____"
What we observe from our customer base is _______.
Let's say I am a user who _________.Now, I can _.
So, how does this differ from X you are probably asking. I can tell you why ______.


--- REQUESTING FEEDBACK ---
Does this make sense_______?
Would you agree_________?
From your perspective, how would you see this working in an ideal world_____?
Are there any criteria you would like me to build on_____?
What is your take on this?
I made the assumption that ______________. Is that a fair assumption_______?
If you had this capability. What would this mean for your organisation_______?
What else do you need to know in order to make a decision_______?
Are there any areas where you feel that we are not addressing ______.











---COMPLIMENT---

You have identified some key applications of this technology_______.

You bring up an important point __________.

You have hit the nail on the head. that's exactly right__________.

That sounds like a perfect use case __________.


--- EMPATHY ---
(Understand their concern and play that back to them)
I can understand why you made your decision. You had limited information at the time _____
I know that you must be thinking _______.
I see that you are doing your best, but how about I give you some inputs ____.

--- SUMMARY ---
So, what did we see there? We saw A) B).
So, What did we look at today. In the first section we looked at ______.
So, I spoke a little bit about _______. Then a little bit about _____.
What you saw today was.

So are there any areas where you believe we fail to meet your requirements?


Like a fun night out of tounge in cheek piss taking. Composed Smile.