Think of any skill performed by a master and I will guarantee that they practise, practise and practise. Any movement or thought fires off neural pathways in the brain. Repeating a movement or thought strengthens the pathway so that it becomes easier to fire off. Ie the task becomes easier and more memorable.

5 things Sir Alex Ferguson recommends for success

Sir Alex Ferguson knows a thing or two about success. Ryan Giggs, probably his most successful player, had this to say about him, when he himself accepted a lifetime achievement award (The PFA Merit Award) in 2016.
“What Sir Alex always used to say was ‘enjoy it’. It was the last thing he said when you went out and played. Everything came with that obviously – improve every day, practise, listen, dedicate yourself – but most of all enjoy your football. That went for playing when I was 17 until when I was 40. It was a privilege to play at Old Trafford and I tried to enjoy it”
My biggest take-away is “Improve every day, practise, listen, dedicate yourself, but most of all enjoy it. So let’s dive right into these areas.

Improve Everyday

How does one go from novice to master, from mediocre to good? By improving. How do you improve by such a great amount if you are starting out? By improving every single day. And therefore how do you improve every day? By constantly analysing your results and questioning how you can make a tweak here and there.
The Japanese term Kiazen, is a manufacturing philosophy whereby the operative constantly challenges the processes to improve output. Each change, which you implement, is almost trivial; there are no massive restructures. But the minute changes compound over time, so that over the months and years, you make massive improvements. Over decades of Kaizen, it looks like miracles have happened.
You can use the same philosophy, in your personal development. You start with the philosophy that you will get slightly better today than you were yesterday. For instance if you made 10 cold calls yesterday, you will do 11 today. If you ran for 30 minutes today, run for 31 minutes tomorrow. Another way is to look at things that could be better, by moving bottlenecks.
How about looking at a common task that you do many times a week. Could you save them up and batch perform them on one single day? This will free up loads of spare time.
You can only get better everyday by practise.

Practise

Is there a skill you wish to perfect? Then practise makes perfect. What about a new habit you want to change or form, again practise makes perfect. After all, all skills and habits are subconsciously repeated actions. Physical skills are a blend of muscle memory and mental habits. Think of the maestro musician who effortlessly plays their violin. They seem at one with the thing. How do you think they got that good? Practise. Practise and practise some more. When should you practise? All the time and as much as you can. What if you don’t feel like practising? Then you should practise some more. It is through practising when you don’t feel like it, that makes you a champion.
In my sales profession, I think of my day-to-day job as practise. The sales calls I make are practise. I practise in the spirit of improving every day.
But practise what? Your mentors and coaches will tell you what and how. That’s why you should listen.

Listen

When somebody else knows better, it’s difficult to take constructive feedback. However repeatedly, I have read about or heard about successful people who had some mentor or coach, who gave them feedback. You can do two things with feedback – ignore it, because it’s painful to hear the truth, or listen and take it on board.
I’m sure you have heard of Sir Alex’s famous hair dryer treatment, where players who aren’t performing are lambasted. But what about all the small nuggets of wisdom he has imparted. The friendly hand-on-shoulder conversations where failings are gently brought to attention and alternative strategies suggested. Good players would be wise to listen, if they want to be great players.
You also need to listen and take on board the advice from qualified mentors. Who is a qualified mentor? That is someone who is already getting or has achieved the results you want.
What if the person advising you hasn’t achieved anything? Then be very careful. Are they qualified in any way to give you advice? Are they trained in the area in which you want to excel? Or are they further ahead on a similar journey? If they aren’t qualified to advise you in any way, then you can safely disregard their advice.

Dedicate Yourself

Sir Alex was correct in regards to dedication. In fact, you may remember the theme tune from the UK Record Breakers children’s TV program of the 1970s and 80s, with Roy Castle.
“If you want to be the best, if you want to beat the rest, dedication is what you need, if you want to be a record breaker”.
Ahh that takes me back.
It should be self-explanatory and common sense that you have to dedicate yourself to something to excel in it. But what does dedication mean? I think it means committing to something and sticking to it no-matter-what. When the times get tough, and they will, this is a test of your dedication. Dedication means doing the thing when you don’t feel like it. In the face of constant failure, you keep persevering because you are dedicated. When times get really hard – like when you write blog post after blog post and you only get 8 visitors a month to your website (with 100% bounce rate), you keep on going regardless. Eventually, The Law of Averages, God, The Universe or ‘something’ eventually relents and rewards you for your dedication.
What’s an easy way for you to dedicate yourself to something? To learn to enjoy it.

Enjoy It

Enjoyment is the key to it all. You start on a road because you think you might enjoy it or some positive expectation takes hold. Maybe you don’t always enjoy it but sometimes you do. I’m sure the Manchester United players didn’t always enjoy the result, but I’m sure they enjoyed every minute on the field. Those players from the class of ’92, who are all in their mid-forties, as I write today, would give their eyeteeth to be on that field of play once again.
So here’s my challenge to you in whatever endeavour you pursue. Become detached from the results but dedicate yourself to the practice and enjoy every minute of the game, whatever it is.
Enjoy it. One day you will look back on your success and wish you could have just one more game.

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One way to realise your goal is to make sure that you sharpen your face to face selling skills. This is helpful if you have to do door-to-door selling, service sales, or customer service. I will go into a lot more detail on selling skills later, but briefly, here are good tips you have to follow:

Make sure you have all the sales material at hand.

If you are not prepared for everything, don’t expect to make big sales. Always have the order forms, purchase orders, sales slips, selling materials, and specification sheets handy. Bring them wherever you go. Make sure you have extra copies of each in your car, your briefcase, desk, and counter. If you are always ready, you won’t give your customer any room for second thoughts.

Be well organised

Being organised does not only mean you have all your selling materials when and where you need it. It also means you have everything all taken cared of – including the possible questions your customer may throw at you. You have to make sure that for the simplest and the most common of questions, you have the answers handy, either in the back of your mind or on a brochure. Fumbling around for papers and answers won’t do you any good. Your customer might get impatient and change his mind about buying.

Take advantage of the power of good testimonials.

Good customer service will tell you that you don’t forget a customer right after every sale. Instead, you follow up their purchase with the offer of support to help them with anything about the product or to answer questions about its use and functionality. It is also a good time to ask for feedbacks as to whether they are satisfied with the sale, both regarding the commodity and the quality of support or customer service they received. You can even ask some of your all-too-pleased customers for good testimonials. More often than not, they will be very willing to vouch a good word or two about you, the product they bought, and the company that made it.

Update your sales materials regularly.

If you are indeed using catalogs, visual aids, brochures, and leaflets, you have to make sure that they are all up-to-date and accurate. You customers are going to use the information contained in them to guide them with their purchase. They may even use the data you gave and compare it with your competitor’s products. Now if you give them inaccurate data, you can expect either one of two results. The first result: your customer will choose other product over yours because what you have doesn’t fair well when compared to others. This will likely happen if you haven’t updated your materials with the innovations and improvements the manufacturer has made with the product you are offering. And the second result: your customer will buy your product, thinking yours is better than the others, only to find out they are fooled because of the inaccurate facts and figures placed on the brochure they took home with them. Either case, you will end up losing. On both counts, you lose a sale because the second customer is very likely to request for a refund.

Talk to your customer and involve them in every moment of the pre-sale, but stop talking when he has

Again, don’t give your customer any second to reconsider buying. Before he makes up his mind about buying a certain product, continue talking to the customer. Good conversation skill is what every good salesperson possesses. Don’t put it into waste. Use it all the time. Besides, customers can assess right there and then if you are genuinely willing to help them make a good purchase or if you just there to get their money. After they have made the decision to buy, stop talking about that particular product. Remember, they can always change their mind, walk out the store, and leave you dumbfounded. The smart thing to do is ask them if they would be interested in an “advanced” version of the product (if any) or if they would like a complimentary product to go with the sale (Example: Would you like fries or sundae with that meal?).

Provide your customer only with the best possible product and sales deal.

A good salesperson does not think of what he can get out of each sale he makes. He also thinks about the person on the other end of the bargain. A salesperson should strive to understand fully what his customer wants. He has to help him make an informed decision among his legitimate options. Selling is also about caring and trust. This is the primary reason why customers keep coming back.

Motivate your customer to act.

Well, don’t just stand there talking to your customer about the product’s benefit like a broken record. Your constant pitch will just irritate your customer. Instead, drive them to buy. Make them understand that it is a lot better to own the product’s benefits rather than just to hear about it. Goad them to act. Have them complete the sale.

Attempt to sell related products or services to satisfied customers.

A happy customer may be all too willing to buy other products. For example, if you are selling designer clothes to prospects and at the end, they did buy one of your products, try to sell them designer shoes and bags to match. They may not buy right away, but it is such a great opportunity to present them other products that complement the item they’ve purchased. You will then have an active list of customers in the near future.

Reach out to your most likely clients and get referrals.

After understanding your target market, you should know exactly the type of people that will buy what you are selling. Get to meet them and sell to them aggressively. However the meeting goes, either you got a sale or not, get referrals. They will surely have other friends in the same field that may be willing to buy. Always make every meeting worth it, even if you did not strike a deal at all.

Give your customers subsequent sales support.Sales support comes in various forms.

It could be as simple as a telephone enquiry or as complex as a home service. In either case, whether it is your job or not, offer assistance when your customer asks. The least you can do is to direct them to the right support group to handle their concerns. If there is no such group, provide them help as much as your company policies can allow. Always keep in mind that one unhappy customer can create more damage than ten happy customers can repair.

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Skills and Mastery

I always remember my first Sales Manager, saying ‘Your habits will make or break you in Sales’. He was nearly right. Your habits will make or break you in any venture. Habits are so important, I believe they are key for success because they how you form skills and mastery. Success in any venture depends on your skills and mastery in your particular field of endeavour. How do you increase your skills and become a master? Practise, experience and performing certain key actions over and over. In other words your habits are the key.

Break it down

Think about whenever you learned any new skill, under a coach or tutor. Think about learning a new musical instrument. There are always drills and actions you repeat over and over, for example learning the scales. They seem almost mundane and insignificant and yet these are the foundations of your skill. So the first thing you should do when learning or improving any skill is form a habit of practise. Never ever miss a practice.
Early in my career, I was determined to improve my selling skills. I first started by breaking this skill into many smaller skills such as: Cold call telephone prospecting, Questioning, listening, presenting and closing. Then I chose one of these areas to improve first.

What Skill First?

What area or skill should you learn first? Well that depends on you. It could be an area where you need the most improvement. Another school of thought would suggest to work on improving areas where you are already adept ie concentrate on your strengths. A third way is to choose an area that would have the most impact on your results.

My Cold Calling Skills

I remember when I first started cold telephone call sales. I hated it, but I knew that the better I got at it, the better my sales results would be. The more people I could get appointments with, the more I would sell. I dreaded interrupting people, though. I worried about what they would say. I worried about what I would say if they asked me a question. Would I cope if they were nasty to me?
However I was determined that I would become proficient at this key selling skill. First I set myself a daily target, to call at least 20 prospects. This was my habit that I was not going to miss.

Scripting

Next I wrote a short script. Then I started dialing. I did dread it at first. I just wanted to get my 20 calls over and done with and get on with the rest of my day. So I would do the calls first thing in the day. After a few months my results improved, I could predict that out of 100 calls I would book one appointment (1.0% conversion rate). My results kept on improving until I actually started to enjoy it. My conversion rate doubled to 2.0%, so I was getting about two appointments booked per week, out of 100 calls.

My skills improved the more I repeated the activity. What did I actually improve? Well I first noticed what times of day I was most likely to get to make contact with the prospect. I noticed the nuance. I would get better results if I spoke my script a certain why, I experimented with the words and tonality. So the more I did it the better I got.

Another key part of this example is that I became unattached to the results of each individual sales call. This took the fear away. If they hung up the phone or were rude, so what? Actually not many were. Most people are polite if you are polite with them.

PIG review

In practising a skill to master, continuous improvement is what you are after. This is where small incremental improvements are compounded over time. A useful tool you can use to help you in this is the Personal Improvement Grid or the delightfully titled PIG review. After every performance you can review your results and ask yourself the 4 questions, which are designed to root out any areas for improvement or where you can improve further.

What did I do well – and why?

What went wrong – and why?

What could I do differently – and how?

What could I do that is new – and when?

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I love to change. As I am writing this now, I am remembering that it was about 16 years ago when I learned to touch-type. I read in a book, that if you wanted to be a successful salesperson, you should learn to touch-type. So I thought that would do for me then. So I went online and ordered a touch-typing course cd, then sat back in anticipation. (Yes, it was 2002 – there are probably online courses now).

I Perservered

A few days later, there was a thud on our front door welcome mat – a parcel. (Don’t you just love that sound?). The CD had arrived. I ripped open the padded envelope: yes, it was my touch-typing course. The course helped to instill the muscle memory in each finger, so that you could type using all fingers and thumbs without looking at the keyboard. It was tough, but I persevered. My fingers ached, especially the two pinkies, which weren’t used to doing anything. Now my right pinkie was in charge of the : and the ?. Eventually I mastered touch-typing. I haven’t had to re-learn it. I only learned it once. As they say, ‘It is just like riding a bike’. Why is this? I will explain shortly.

Why are we like we are?

Have you ever wondered why we are like we are? Between the mid 1800’s and the 1980s, common wisdom said that once our brains were developed, that was it. We were like we were and there was no changing. You were a – Night Owl, for example. Alternatively, you were a – XYZ (fill the gap).
Now, thankfully, science realises that the brain has plasticity. This means that we can and do change. But how can we change?

What Doesn’t Work

Firstly, let’s look at what doesn’t work. Sitting around doing nothing will obviously not result in any change. Also doing the same things that you’ve done before will also not result in any change. You’ve heard the saying that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting the same results. This is very true. In this, I include reading self-development books and not following through on the actions. Also not following through on the initial motivation, you get at a seminar. For permanent change to happen we need to influence the part of the mind that will allow change to happen.

Where change happens.

We all know that the mind has different levels of consciousness. Very loosely, we can describe them as conscious and subconscious. It is the subconscious mind, which controls all of our bodily functions. The subconscious keeps us alive, without us having to think about it. It also holds our instincts, memories, beliefs and habits; in effect all our learned behaviours. It’s very effective too.

Skills

Practise a skill until it becomes ingrained and it becomes permanent.
So let’s go back to my touch-typing skill. I consciously decided to practise and learn it. The skill now resides in my subconscious mind. It is muscle memory. It is now permanent.
What are the ways in which we can learn or unlearn? How can we consciously influence the subconscious so that it will change?
There are several ways to influence the subconscious, I explain these in my book Subconscious: How to Make Personal Development Permanent.

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