8-5-2013
Fortunately for me, there are seminars for people who do seminars. Those are the seminars I go to. The most important lesson I ever learned is that adults learn by doing, not by hearing how the trainer did it.
Rewind to 20 years ago: I had conducted nearly a thousand radio-specific seminars when I attended one of those seminars for people who do seminars. Adult education expert Bob Pike was the speaker. Pike said something that day I very much needed to hear:
At the end of your training session, your audience members should be more impressed with their ability to do the job you?re training them to do than with your ability to do the job you?re training them to do.
Boy, did that hit home.
In that moment, I realized that I had spent nearly 10 years telling my audiences how I sold radio in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 70s. And while I never ended a seminar with the words, ?Go ye therefore and do likewise,? I secretly longed to create thousands of Chris Lytle clones.
Today, my attitude is that my audience members want to become better versions of themselves and not carbon copies of me.
Like my early seminars, your sales training sessions can become war-story driven. However, one of the best ways for adults to learn is to participate in a discussion rather than sit through a lecture. I urge my clients to hold an ?Honors Class in Selling? training session.
In a college honors class, students come to class having already done the assigned reading and the supplementary reading. They are interested in the subject matter. It is, after all, their major.
Your salespeople are ?majoring? in sales success. Involve them in the learning process instead of doing things for them.
Ask your salespeople to do one of the following things before the sales meeting:
1. Watch a TED Talk about a topic you specify
2. Read an article or chapter in a sales book
3. Listen to a podcast or CD that you specify in advance
At the meeting, go around the table and ask questions like these:
1. What was the big idea from our pre-meeting assignment for you?
2. Can you apply what you learned with an advertiser or prospect?
3. How would you do that?
4. What would keep you from implementing the idea?
5. Is there an action you can take based on the content you consumed and our discussion of it?
Here?s the tough question for anyone who does sales training: Would you want to be in your audience?
You see, when you or I make the training about our past successes instead of our audience?s future achievements, our training sessions aren?t nearly as interesting to the audience as they are to us.
Chris Lytle is the founder of Sparque, Inc. This well-traveled speaker has conducted more than 2200 seminars on three continents. He?s the best-selling author of The Accidental Salesperson and The Accidental Sales Manager.
Reach Chris by e-mail chris.lytle@sparque.biz
(8/5/2013 7:57:23 AM)
Well said, Chris. Every time a sales trainer uses the word "I" they're tuning out people who care about their careers.
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