These are incredibly difficult times for salespeople. Competition in almost every industry continues to intensify. At the same time, customers seem to expect more and more service and demand lower margins. Most markets are rapidly changing, and it’s hard to keep up with the changes in technology and products. Covid has produced an unprecedented change in just the last 12 months.

Rapid Change

As a consultant, I work with executives and salespeople in a variety of industries. And almost invariably, during my first interview with a new client, I hear words something like this, “You need to understand that things are changing very rapidly in our industry.”

I do understand because I see things changing very rapidly in virtually every industry with which I work. And the indications are that this rapid state of change will not be a temporary phenomenon we all must live through. Rather, it will be the permanent condition we must accept for the foreseeable future.

Howard Stein said, “All I know is, things don’t work like they used to work. So don’t plan on doing anything based on the past.”

Complexity in Market Change

Closer to our own lives, we see our markets splintering into more and more fragments. Products, energized by the explosion in knowledge and new technologies, are becoming increasingly more complex. For example, can you imagine a piece of equipment today that doesn’t have a computer somewhere in its innards?

The services we buy and sell are becoming more complex as computer capabilities are folded into services of all types, and providers respond to the market demand for personalized service. Therefore, the business environment in the near future will continue to be characterized by rapid change and growing complexity.

All this means that the skills, strategies and tactics that have served you well in the past may be becoming obsolete. But here’s an even more sobering thought — because of the rapid rate of change, the new skills and tactics that you develop today may well be obsolete in just a few years.

Salespeople Need to Change Too

That means that in order to deal with these difficult times, salespeople need to be able to continually change what they are doing. They need to absorb new information created by our changing world, review their tactics in light of it, and change their behavior in positive ways.

In other words, they need to continually learn.

The ultimate self-improvement skill in our lifetime and beyond is the ability to master “purposeful, self-directed learning.”

Learning

When most of us hear the word “learning” we often associate it with formal school, or perhaps seminars and company-sponsored training programs. While these are all means of facilitating learning, they don’t capture the essence of the ultimate self-improvement skill.

Self-directed learning is the ability, on the part of the individual, to absorb new information, and to change one’s behavior in positive ways in response to it. The key is behavior change. Learning without action is impotent. And knowledge that doesn’t result in changed action is of little value. Constant change in your behavior is the only reasonable response to a constantly changing world.

Self-directed learning differs from the traditional approaches to “training” in that it requires the individual to assume complete responsibility for their own behavior change. The stimulus for the learning must come from the individual, and that individual must develop their own learning program to expose themself to new information, and to change their behavior appropriately.

Let’s look at two fundamental areas of a salesperson’s job in order to see how the need to “learn” is critical.

Products

The explosion in information has led to technological innovation and change at a dizzying rate. This means that new products are coming into every market — more quickly and more regularly than ever before.

The competent salesperson can no longer rely on their product knowledge. The product that is today’s hot new seller will likely become an obsolete dinosaur within a couple of years.

So, salespeople must acquire the skills of constantly learning about new products and new technologies. There will be a continuous string of new language to learn, new features to understand, and new applications to new needs on the part of their customers.

Markets and Customers

On the other side of the selling equation, the markets — our customers — are changing just as rapidly. On one hand, there is a great deal of change in the names and styles of the players (Wal-Mart instead of thousands of independent businesses), while on the other, every industry is becoming more complex as the trend toward specialization creates a kaleidoscope of market segments in place of the homogeneous markets with which many of us grew up.

Salespeople will have to continually refine their interactive skills and deal with each customer as a unique individual. That will require them to learn more intently about their customers and the most effective processes — a never-ending challenge.

At the same time the world is changing rapidly for us, it is changing just as rapidly for our customers. One day it seems that the lowest price is the only concern, while the next day they talk about long-term “partnering” with trusted suppliers.

The competent salesperson not only has to keep up with changing customers but also customers who change in their needs and demands.

Preparing to Master Self-Directed Learning

Proficiency at the ultimate self-improvement skill demands some new competencies from salespeople. While the specific skills are too detailed for this article, we can describe some of the qualities needed to enable a person to become an active self-directed learner.

First, they must have an attitude of “pro-active” responsibility for their situation. In other words, they must believe that their actions have consequences and that in order to change the consequences they must change their actions. This sounds so fundamental as to be ludicrous, yet it seems to be a concept that is foreign to those who blame forces outside themselves for their situations. As long as we remain a victim of someone else, we have no responsibility to change our own behavior.

So, salespeople must accept responsibility for their own behavior and for the consequence of that behavior. As one of my clients said to me, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” Therefore, you need to change what you do if you expect different consequences.

Next, salespeople engaging in self-directed learning need to have an openness to new information. Probably one of the sure harbingers of pending failure is the attitude that you know it all. Salespeople who will continue to improve themselves understand that they don’t ever have all the answers. There is always something new to learn. And, like magnets, they’re continually searching for new ideas, new perspectives, and new information.

And finally, they need to be able to follow through on their plans. They must have the ability to act on decisions they have made and become creatures whose actions arise out of conscious thought rather than unconscious habit.

Given this set of attitudes, a salesperson can begin to master the procedures and disciplines that will characterize them as a “self-directed learner” and equip them to be successful in our turbulent times.

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].