How do you know you are learning?

There are more than enough writings around the world that discuss the importance of learning.

Learning is often the key to winning in today’s world. Our competitive edge is for us to learn faster and better than our competition.

You also need to learn to keep up with times. Change is the only constant and what use to be the way of doing things in your job will no longer be applicable tomorrow. You need to learn new skills and technologies.

Or you may need to learn to embark on an alternative career. Unlike the good old days, things are faster and business cycles are getting shorter. In the event that your industry or sector is not growing, you will have to change, before someone decides that you need to change.

The Singapore government is pouring millions (or maybe more?) to promote this concept call the “life long learning”. As Confucius said “learn as long as you live”.

Of course, the catch is: how do you know you are learning?

This is what I normally teach participants in my sales training.

“You know you are learning when you can do something that you previously can’t.”

As simple as it may sound, it has deeper implications.

1) It puts the focus on “doing”. In other word, while new knowledge is meaningful and important, it is not enough. You must translate this knowledge into practice.

As you already know, knowing and doing are entirely different. Most of us know that we need to floss our teeth everyday. In reality, sometimes even dentist don’t do it everyday.

It takes discipline – a tremendous amount of it.

What if you pick up some new knowledge, but couldn’t make the transition into practice?

Well, perhaps you have not fully internalize the knowledge. In this case, repetition is crucial. That is also why I always encourage my participants to make time to come back for refresher course.

2) This definition of learning focus on result. It isn’t just doing. It means achieving certain success that you have not done before.

Thus, like what we teach our participants, learning a closing technique and able to do it in the classroom setting is not sufficient. You must be able to get the desire result from a real prospect through the use of this technique.

So let me ask you again: Are you learning everyday?

teck beng
www.coachme2sell.com