Outbound Prospecting Coaching: The Brain Needs Sleep to Learn
By: Steve Richard, Co-Founder and Head Sales TrainerIn order to understand the business case for investments in sales prospecting coaching, we first need to know a little bit about something that hopefully we all have: our brains. I’ve been learning a lot lately about the way the brain learns new things, and it’s actually easier than you might think. The two key ingredients, focus and sleep, are also the reason that the smartest companies utilize coaching.
Recent neuroscience research tells us that when a person gives focus and attention on a topic over a period of time, the person literally grows the part of the brain needed to be good at that new thing. For example London cab drivers who memorize those very confusing streets have a larger region of the brain responsible for spatial ability called the posterior hippocampus (Newsweek: Can You Build a Better Brain, Jan 10 & 17, 2011). The key component to learning something new like sales prospecting techniques (or London streets) is repetition over a period of time with sleep in between. Sleep allows the brain to move memories from parts of the brain responsible for short term memory to parts responsible for long term memory. This process is kind of like the way a computer moves information from the short term RAM to the long term hard drive. Sleep is the key ingredient. If you want to master a new skill, the equation is pretty simple: focus, get a good night’s sleep, and focus again. Repeat over a month or several months apart, and you reactivate those memories to become a master of that skill. Pretty easy, right? I've learned a lot on this topic from Bruce Lewolt of BrainX.
This is why sales prospecting coaching and reinforcement are so critical. The brain learns and masters new skills naturally over a period of time. It takes focus and it takes sleep. The brains of your field sales, inside sales, and lead generation teams work this way as well. Do you want to get a big time pay off from your sales prospecting training? You need someone who is dedicated to the reps over a period of time to see that they are implementing the new ideas and techniques from the prospecting training. The coach aids in the process of attention and memory reactivation. Research tells us that training alone without follow up support and coaching yields a far lower increase in productivity. See this example:
A 1997 study of 31 public-sector managers by Baruch College researchers Gerald Olivero, K. Denise Bane, and Richard E. Kopelman found that a training program alone increased productivity 28 percent, but the addition of follow-up coaching to the training increased productivity 88 percent.
The learning management system, BrainX, works with the way the brain naturally likes to learn. Mastery is grown in the brain and it takes time.
Who is coaching your outbound prospecting, lead generation, or lead qualification team?
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Posted by on 01/25 at 11:36 AM
