After talking with one of my business partners last night I came to realize something, and that is,
Training is evil.
Or can be, when you
over train. Over training leads to complexity and complexity always leads to reduced duplication.
It starts with the best of intentions. You want to nail things down,
make them airtight, and cover all the bases. But anything complex
enough to cover every scenario is going to kill replication, because it
gets away from the basic premise underlying all duplication. The
formula, if you will:
Get a large group of people to perform a few simple actions, for a sustained time.
The further you get away from this formula, the less duplicable results you’ll see down the group.
Here’s what you have to watch out for…
Sales trainers who want to come in and teach a bunch of closing techniques to your team. This is not a sales business; it’s a teaching and training one.
Delving too deep into the personality types. Lost
of systems on these: Carlson, colors, animals, or character traits.
Absolutely the profiles have validity. But if your beginning people are
trying to learn this and quantify prospects – many will die early.
NLP practitioners who want to train your team on neuro-linguistic programming. NLP
is an amazing technology that can help people with fears and phobias.
But when you start to prostitute it to manipulate people to do things
against their will – you’re crossing an ethical line and killing
duplication at the same time.
Creating manuals of scripts for every occasion. Can
you say “overkill” boys and girls? If you have one script for people
who work for you, another for people you work for, one for in-laws and
one for outlaws, one for young people and one for old – the only people
who sponsor on your team will be the salespeople. And salespeople don’t
duplicate.
There can be a place for training in these four areas. (Although
personally I’m against the NLP training.) But take any of them too far
and you become the hardest-working, lowest-paid grinder in your
company. I know – I was that guy for years.
What we’re really talking about here is the difference between
selling tactics versus creating culture in your team. The grinders has
3-ring binders filled with potential scripts, closes, and tactics. The
Rock Stars in the professional create culture that guides people how to
respond in any situation. If you learn nothing else, let me teach you
your new mantra…
Grinders Fill Binders – Rock Stars Drive Bonus Cars.
