Easy Business Success #22

The incredible power of PPP

“If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days,
the critics know it; if I don't practise for three days the audience knows it.”
Sergei Rachmaninov (Russian composer and piano virtuoso)

One of my favourite hobbies is reading biographies and autobiographies of successful sportspeople and business people.

One thing that all top sportspeople have in common is the large amount of time they spend practising and training in their sport.

I remember reading about the legendary tennis player Bjorn Borg and how at a very early age he would practise for five hours non stop on his tennis strokes. I see the top golfers routinely hit over 1,000 golf balls a day to practise their golf swing.

I have a friend who is a black belt in Kendo. He spends over twenty hours every week training and practising in this martial art and he is frighteningly good at it.

I also love to read about and talk with successful people in selling. And guess what?
They too spend a huge amount of time practising and training in their field.

I was reading a fascinating book about Ben Feldman who was called the greatest life insurance salespeople in the world. (The book was ‘The Feldman Method: the Words and Working Philosophy of the World's Greatest Insurance Salesman’ and was written by Ben’s manager Andrew Thomson.)

Ben Feldman worked for New York Life and would routinely sell over a hundred million dollars of insurance every year, while the average insurance salesperson would sell two or three million dollars of insurance in a year.

Even when he was at the top of his profession, Ben would still spend at least two hours a day studying and practising what he was going to say to clients.

He was always looking for a new idea that would help one of his clients, or make his presentations more effective. He would rehearse constantly the questions he was going to ask and the points he was going to make.

Ben never stopped practising and learning.

I believe that PPP or practise, practise, practise is one of the most important things you can do to improve your sales results and your income.

So in this issue of Easy Business Success I want to show you how to apply this idea and turn it into more money in your pocket.

How to use PPP to improve your sales results:

One of the most helpful articles I have ever read on success was by Michael Masterson. The article was on how long it actually takes to learn any worthwhile skill.

Michael comments that you might want to know, for example, how long it takes to:

Speak Spanish
Become a good public speaker
Dance well at weddings
Practice a martial art
Play a musical instrument
Learn the secrets of direct marketing
Become a good copywriter

Michael explains that almost as soon as you ask the question, you realize that “how good” needs to be defined, for we recognize that it is possible to practice any skill at various levels of proficiency. To make matters simple, let’s say that, broadly speaking, you can have the following three levels of skill:

Competence
Mastery
Virtuosity

Example:

Let’s illustrate this principle with ballroom dancing. You probably know people who move well on the dance floor. Whether it’s a cha-cha, a swing or a fox trot playing, they can go out there and make the moves. They are not professionals – they could not compete favorably in contests – but they are definitely competent. The next level – mastery – is the level of the professional dancer…. the teacher or the member of the dance troupe. It’s easy to see the difference between competence and mastery, isn’t it? Virtuosity? That’s Fred Astaire.

If one of a hundred dancers is competent, then one of a hundred masters is at the Fred Astaire level.

Michael has spent quite a bit of time thinking about this, talking to professionals and recalling personal experiences.

Michael’s conclusion is as follows:

It takes about 1,000 hours to become competent at any worthwhile skill.
It takes about 5,000 hours to master any skill.
It takes between 25,000 and 35,000 hours to become world class.
(And then only if you are gifted to start with.)
Michael notes that you can also deduct 20% to 30% off for good teaching or mentoring.
So with a good teacher you might become competent in something like Jiu-jitsu in around 700-800 hours rather than 1,000 hours.

I like Michael’s idea on the amount of time it takes to learn important skills; and can see it being directly relevant to improving your sales results and increasing your income:

It will take around 1,000 hours of practice to become competent at selling your product or service and around 5,000 hours of practice to master selling your product or service.

Michael notes that most people make a huge mistake in learning any important skill.
Most people will do enough practice to become competent, however only a tiny number will ever put in the hours of practice to master the skill.

Because it’s only when you master a valuable skill (like selling) that your life will be transformed. You will earn a huge amount of money and also feel very good about what you do. The interesting thing I’ve noticed about selling is that when you get very good, you can often earn in one month what the average person would earn in a year. I recall the first time I was paid over $50,000 for one months work in selling. I remember thinking that it wasn’t that hard to do. However it did take a lot of time and practice to get to there.

Example:

A client of mine (also called Michael) told me the same thing. Michael was a moderately successful real estate person when he finally decided to get serious about selling. He put in hundreds of hours of practice and study on selling real estate. He learnt how to market high priced homes in exclusive neighborhoods. Within three years he was consistently earning over $50,000 a month. He told me that in one month alone he was paid over $104,000 income.

The key point I’m trying to make here is this:

Put in the 5,000 hours of practice to master selling. You can usually do this over 3-5 years and your life will never be the same afterwards. The good news is that just getting part of the way to mastering selling will usually have you earning a good six figure income.

Whether you like it or not there is no substitute for putting in several hundred hours of practice when learning an important skill like selling.

There is a big difference between doing a sales presentation once or twice and doing the same presentation one or two hundred times. You will usually be far more effective when you have put in several hundred hours of practice. One of the reasons for this is that after you have done at least a hundred different sales presentations you start to recognize what seems to work well and what doesn’t work well.

Example:

When I first began selling motivational seminars around 24 years ago I used to spend about an hour in my first meeting with a potential client. And I would tell them everything I thought they should know about the seminars and how they worked. I would give them a lot of information and ask very few questions about their goals and what they were trying to achieve. I noticed after about 50 presentations like this that my sales results were terrible. So I began changing what I did.

I began to ask a few more questions and I found ways to explain things in a way that was easy for my clients to understand. I began to tell clients less detail and spent more time on making sure they understood key concepts.

And surprise, surprise my sales results improved. After another 50 presentations I began to see that a number of my clients had similar concerns and questions. There were patterns I was starting to notice. After another 100 presentations I was able to refine what I was doing and be far more effective at showing clients how they could achieve their goals by using the ideas in these seminars.

And today every time I do another 30-40 presentations on my marketing services I notice a few more things I can do to be better at selling.

However, none of this is possible without practice.

Here is a simple strategy you can use to practice and master selling:

The 30/10 formula

I first came across the 30/10 formula about 25 years ago when a friend of mine lent me a self improvement cassette tape. I have long forgotten the name of the person on the tape, however he had an interesting concept on how to practice and improve your skills.

He called it the 30/10 formula and it was very simple. You spend 30 minutes every day reading information that will improve your knowledge and skills in an important area for you. During this 30 minute period you also spend 10 minutes reading aloud the information you are studying.

The person on the tape said that 30 minutes a day is around 180 hours a year of learning you will be doing. That is over a solid month of forty hour weeks. And 10 minutes a day of reading aloud is over 3,000 minutes a year or nearly 50 hours of voice training practice.

The 30/10 formula was very specific in how you did your reading aloud:

You took in a breath at the start of a sentence and then began reading aloud your material.
You then paused briefly at each punctuation mark and stopped at the end of a sentence and took another breath. You then began reading the next sentence; pausing briefly again at each punctuation mark. If you needed to take another breath during any sentence, you would pause briefly and do this.

When I first came across the 30/10 formula I had a big problem. I used to talk very fast and my customers found it very hard to understand what I was saying. I knew that talking too fast was costing me sales; however I was not sure how I could fix it.

I decided that the 30/10 formula could be a useful way for me to learn more skills and improve my income so I decided to try it. I picked out one of my favorite books on selling and began reading it for 30 minutes each morning. I also began reading it aloud for 10 minutes as part of each 30 minute session. I have to say that reading aloud for 10 minutes was a lot harder than I thought it would be. The first day I could only do it for about 3 minutes and my voice got croaky. I found that breathing in at the start of sentence and then pausing at each punctuation mark was very tiring. The next day I got to about 5 minutes and stopped. I discovered that reading aloud was completely different from doing my normal talking.

I kept up my 30/10 formula for about two months and some remarkable things happened.
I found that I began to really understand and was able to use some of the ideas in my book on selling. It seemed to make more sense and have more relevance when I began to consistently study it each day. And then something really strange occurred. Within a one week period I had four people who knew me ask what I was doing differently. They wondered if I had a new haircut or was wearing some new clothes because I somehow appeared different to them. And they couldn’t quite work out why or how I was different.

In fact what was different was that my voice had changed in that two month period. I now pronounced words clearer and I was speaking slower and with more authority. All from reading aloud for 10 minutes a day.

I also had another added bonus that my sales increased noticeably in this two month period of reading aloud for 10 minutes a day as part of my 30/10 formula.

Now the great thing about the 30/10 formula is that you have complete control over the material you want to study. I recommend that you pick material that will have a direct influence on your income as soon as possible.

If you are relatively new in your industry or type of business, you may want to make product knowledge something you focus on right now. So you may choose to use your 30/10 formula by reading trade publications in your industry. Or perhaps you may pick one or two good books or informative reports that give a lot of detailed and helpful product knowledge in your field. Using the 30/10 formula on material like this could give you the product knowledge you need to be more confident in your sales presentations.

In many cases you may already have good product knowledge and so you need to focus on something else. Maybe you need to be able to make more effective sales presentations. Perhaps you need to be able to get a good number of client referrals each week. Or perhaps all you really need is a lot more interested prospects to talk to.

Whatever would help you the most right now, pick material that covers this topic and use it when you practice your 30/10 formula.

I like the 30/10 formula because it is very simple and it seems to produce a noticeable improvement in skills and knowledge within a relatively short period of using it.

Action Exercise:

Write down the type of material that would have the potential to increase your sales or income if you practiced it right now. See if you can pick something that would be immediately helpful.

Now start by spending at least 10 minutes a day reading this material and spend at least 3-5 minutes of this time reading it aloud. Once you have the habit of doing this for at least 10 minutes a day, you can then start to slowly increase it by a few minutes each day over a period of time.

Recommended Viewing:

There is a remarkable video on YouTube called “People are Awesome” which shows what you can do with a few thousand hours of practice.

You’ll be amazed at what is possible!

The video is around 4 ½ minutes long and I highly recommended you watch it.

Click here to watch video.

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You can contact Graham on graham@twomac.co.nz

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