Top Vocab Tip

'What you need to acquire a foreign language is graft.'

The thrust of noted polyglot, Noel Malcolm. A distinguished scholar who speaks any number of languages. At least fifteen, stemming from his student days taking Balkan Summer trips.

When one journalist asked him recently [sub'n req'd] on secrets to the acquisition of languages, he seems to have straight-batted with no-shortcuts truth, “blood, sweat and tears”.

Perhaps a little more flesh comes from one of his favourite methods, 'you get a really good vocabulary list and learn ten words from it every single night'.

This really does remind me that a Sales operation is not usually a good learning environment. As one early boss quipped to me in my cub rep days;

'you can make mistakes learning the craft and trying new things, but not on my deals'.

Right.

I also rail against what the so-called training pros - definitely largely peopled by Tantric Sector, no-skin-in-game, 'lanyard class' types - consider as a 'learning environment'. A Sales Prevention Dept writ large. I myself have been aghast at how an attempt to expand trainee comfort zones can be slapped back.

There is another side to the problem though. Many a seller bristles at being exposed to what they believe as being treated like schoolchildren.

I myself recall many a vocab test set for the next morning. For both native tongue spelling and foreign language translations. A typical format was to study a list of say, two or three dozen, then ten asked for under exam conditions at the start of a lesson next day.

Can you picture this transposed into selling?

Product and Service unique bullets. Clients by sector, size or stance. Objection handle thrusts. Testimonial quotes by role. Legacy outcomes by numbers.

I can feel the heat now. Yet imagine that this is part of the natural order of things within your Sales endeavour.

Something any organisation seeking true continuous improvement would embrace.

If yours is not shaped as such, then an ideal place to kickstart it can often be around the launch of a new product.

New wares, new ways.

When first climbing the greasy pole to sales leadership of my own, driving insane distances in tandem was daily. Yet I deliberately sought to buck the behaviour of the typical nonsense chitchat, with focus on the meeting ahead only as you drive into their car park. If not quite role-play conditions, general discussions around where we were headed as a unit, what we stood for, and how we got this across was very much part of the travel time.

Nowadays, I've also conducted round-the-rooms beginning to instil best-practice. You can circle more than once. In-person and over video. That won't please the training Stasi, but it's our quota, and our career at stake, not theirs.