A founder prepared for sales by reading every book and listening to podcasts, then discovered that hands-on experience teaches what books can't. Learning by doing beats theory alone, but the best salespeople combine both.
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In a recent conversation with the founder, he shared with me that he has never worked in sales and that in preparation for his startup he read several books and watched every podcast of a certain sales guru. And now he was ready to sell the services of a startup and build and lead a sales team. This conversation led me to weigh the value of Learning from books versus the benefit of experience Book Smart versus Street Smart Is it that everything you need to know you can find in a book? Or are books bad at conveying knowledge and readers just don't realize Is certainly true that there is quite literally nothing that has not been written about whatever topic you can think of. There is printed or digital text available to read about it Overcoming time and distance is a key benefit of learning from books. It is a telltale sign of a book smart person that they can share knowledge around historical events or faraware places generally unrelated to their own life. In contrast, any of my own experiences have to happen in my time and location. As the phrase indicates, a street smart person possesses know how directly related and stemming from the streets they walked. This practical experience has its own set of methods and benefits. The first learning by doing it means learning from experiences resulting directly from one's own action, as contrasted with learning from watching others perform. The second learning from mistakes. No one is immune to making mistakes. They're human, after all. But if we simply apologize and carry on as before, we're in danger of repeating the same errors. Making a mistake rallies our attention and it doesn't have to be dramatic. Being wrong on a sales forecast, for example, certainly makes us more diligent, attentive in applying different methods or factors the next time around. The third Learning through relational framing. Objects or events that are relationally framed become verbal, and doing so as part of an experience or interaction creates framing. Definitely a better framing vis a vis the theoretical book learning approach. The fourth Learning through experimentation. Crawl, walk, run, fly. These steps or stages, to be followed in this specific order, are part of so many approaches in business. After hiring a new sales rep, you don't take them on their first day to your most valuable target to pitch. They shadow an experience rep first, then try pitching to smaller accounts before tackling a big guy, often after weeks or months of crawling and walking. The fifth Learning by immediately applying a new skill. There's a big difference between just absorbing information and putting what you've learned directly into practice without doing the later any training you receive will go to waste. And finally, the last method, learning by trial and error. As an example, messaging and positioning of a new product are rarely only a theoretical exercise. They require repeated field testing with potential clients, leading to adjustments and modifications, and they then continue to be subject to revisions as clients, markets, decision makers, or other factors change in reality, an ongoing process of trial and error. My conclusion on the topic let's try to be book smart and street smart. Knowledge from books expands the horizon and it lays a foundation. Learning through one's own experience and doing so continuously and bringing this proactively to the table every time creates true expertise.
