Impacting Learning Speed

This week let’s talk about learning speed. We’ll discuss the factors that determine learning speed, how you can increase it, and how you can use learning speed on offense and defense in your selling.

Why is it that sometimes we can learn something new almost instantly and other times it takes forever? Did you know that there are 3 major factors that determine learning speed?

(1.) How big of a priority it is to you (i.e. your level of motivation)

(2.) Your level of knowledge on the topic (i.e. how far along you are on the learning curve already)

(3.) How much what you already know conflicts with what you’re learning (i.e. is there much unlearning to do?)

Let’s look at each one of them with a couple of examples.

Priority – When you’re highly motivated to learn something new you will learn it faster. So the “why” is an important piece.

Some friends introduced my wife and I to Pickleball about four years ago. I had played competitive tennis in my teens and twenties and picked it up again after moving to a Florida community with a lot of good players. So learning pickleball wasn’t a priority for me then. I was focused on getting my tennis game back.

But I hurt my Achilles tendon (ironically climbing a hill carrying a golf bag), which put me out of commission for a year. When I came back, learning pickleball became much more interesting to me. Playing on a smaller court to me meant less running, easier on the legs. My motivation changed and I started studying the game.

Knowledge – My level of knowledge of Pickleball when I started was split – low when it came to the rules and medium when it came to skills. Having played tennis (and ping pong), my skills in hitting the ball were pretty good. Overheads, volleys, ground strokes, drop shots were all similar enough that the main things to get used to were the bounce of the ball and size of the paddle. I knew I’d be decent at the game but I had to learn the rules.

Unlearning – Unlearning took awhile, especially only playing once a week. Serving was an in an underhand, upward motion, very different than tennis stokes. Not being able to volley when close to the net and having to let the ball bounce on the return of their return when serving were very different than tennis and took time to unlearn. So were the scoring and a handful of other rules.

To complete the Pickleball example, two and a half years ago I was playing once a week. I started playing twice a week and my skills immediately improved. Last year I went to playing three times and my game got better still. I haven’t mastered the game yet, (not sure if anyone really does), but as they say, it has “slowed down” for me. Muscle memory has developed, so there’s less thinking and more reacting, having now played so many games.

Bottom line: once I made it a priority (by deciding I had to play more to get better at it), the learning speed accelerated.

Example #2

As a sales trainer I’ve had a handful of people come into classes who’d learned more of what I call a manipulative sales approach. Good people, bad method. “You do want to (grow revenues, improve productivity, reduce costs, name your benefit) don’t you?” is an example of that kind of selling. I call it the “paint them into a corner” method.

For salespeople who’d been taught that, becoming proficient with the consultative approach that I taught was going to take some time. There’s a lot of unlearning to be done. The good news is by the end of the class, they all understood why the consultative approach was much better for them, that it would lead to better relationships and more sales. And they now had a plan to get there.

Once they became motivated to change, it became a priority, which drove them to study the method and practice the skills in being more consultative. At least 3 of those folks, that I know of anyway, have become award-winning pros.

Here’s the point: Motivation shortens learning speed. If you don’t make it a priority, it’ll take a long time to get there (if ever).

How to use this in your selling

As a new logo salesperson, demonstrating how similar your product is to what they’re using now is actually an advantage. Your differentiation is a two-edge sword and can hurt you if it means their people have to do something completely different to use your product.

As a relationship manager in a competitive renewal situation the more your client would have to unlearn to move to a competitor’s product, the better it is for you (as long as you influence them to think about that). In a cross-sell situation, where you’re competing for new business with a current client, the same logic applies as long as the product you’re recommending has a similar look and feel as what they already have.

Next time you want to learn something new

If you’d like some kind of rough idea how long it’s going to take, look at the learning through the lens of these 3 variables.

Rules of thumb: High motivation increases learning speed. Higher level of knowledge on the topic increases learning speed. Little unlearning to do increases learning speed. And, the opposite of these increases the time it will take to learn something new.

To go faster: make it a priority. Devote more time to it. Get more reps/practice it more. You’ll get it into muscle memory faster. 

Good luck and have a great week!

Bob

P.S. Is there a sales topic you’d like me to cover? Please send me your suggestions. I’d love to see them. [email protected]. Thanks.