Hi, I’m Joelle and I am one of the sales and leadership coaches with Emerge Sales Training. Today’s blog is about How To Keep Your Professional Development On Track To Yield Big Results.
As our students progress through our courses, they learn a number of new skills along the way. The question I always get is “Joelle, how do I implement everything and put it all together?” I am going to talk with you today about how to do just that!
In preparation for this I read an article about the science behind learning new skills. In that article there were a few key points that I want you to keep in mind.
First, spread out learning over time. The authors of the article call it “distributive practice”. Ah, practice! One of our favorite things here at Emerge! Going through the course is the first thing but even more important than obtaining the knowledge is practicing small pieces of the material over time. It will help strengthen the connections in your brain and solidify your learning.
Second is to apply your new skills everyday. The best way we learn is through context. So as you perform these skills regularly in your day to day business activities, it will help what you learned stick around longer.
Now, back to the question at hand which if you remember was, “How do I implement all the things I learned and put everything together?”
Are you ready for the answer? You don’t……..well not right away. Think about our keys to solidifying learning: practicing in small chunks and applying skills over time! It will happen over time. Now how do we make sure that happens? We can take a page from a traditional business book.
WHAT?
That’s right. I know not all things apply to network marketing but there are a few gems that we may want to steal.
What are some things that traditional businesses or corporations do that we could incorporate in our network marketing businesses?
- Give yourself a performance review at least once a year
You can choose to do this twice a year. It is up to you and how fast you would like to develop your skills. Depending on your experience in the past, you may or may not have appreciated this process. Nonetheless, it is an important exercise because it will help you in creating your next step, so stay tuned! Some questions that you may ask yourself are:
What skills/knowledge do I have?
What skills/knowledge do I need to improve on currently?
Where do I want to be or my business to be in five years time?
What skills/knowledge will I need to be effectively run my business at that time?
To help you answer these questions, you can utilize the tools we teach you how to use in our courses. These would include your sales, leadership & recruiting trackers. Your data will be compiled here and they also list out the basic skills necessary to get results in each area. Once you have come up with your list, then you can move onto Step Two.
- Develop a professional development plan
You are going to use the list of what skills you would like to improve and create a plan in which you focus on one or two skills at a time. Your development plan should be focused around activities that you do daily and continuously.
After you list out the skills you would like to improve on, ask yourself a few questions about your plan:
Does the plan reflect your needs now and/or for the future?
Does your plan reflect new learning or growth?
Have you used data to determine the skills you will work on?
The answer to the third question would be, “yes” if you used your trackers to formulate a baseline. When reflecting on whether or not you are improving on the skills you have picked, take a look at your trackers once again to gauge your growth. You should see your numbers improve.
So, my final question to you is: When are you going to schedule your performance review?
Thank you so much for reading today’s blog. To sign up for one of our free trainings on closing or recruiting, go to emergesalestraining.com/freetraining.
Have a great day!