JLM & Associates offers personal development counseling to help you take control of your personal and business success. Learn how to seize the kind of income you deserve and achieve the successful future of your dreams.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Why You Must Double Your Knowledge

In my Blog entries the last couple of months I've written quit a bit about the importance of continuous education if you want to be successful, but that it's up to you to do it. No one can force you to learn. You have to want to learn. You have to be motivated to learn.

I want to share with you today a wonderful success story that I found out about when I was conducting a seminar in Anaheim, California this week.

During the break a man came up to me and told me that he attended a seminar I gave in Chicago last year and it had changed his life. When I asked he to tell me more about it, he replied that he was in sales a year ago and was extremely frustrated. He was not doing very well, and he was barley making enough money to cover his bills. He felt like he was spinning his wheels and was ready to quit.

He told me during the seminar I had urged the attendees to carefully analyze their work and determine what was holding them back from achieving their business goals? What was limiting them? What were they good at? What were they poor at? What was their major area of weakness?

He told me that when I asked those questions, he realized that he didn't like prospecting for customers. As a result, he wasn't very good at it and he avoided it as much as possible. The very idea of prospecting filled him with fears of rejection. Not surprisingly, his sales continued to go down. He was working with fewer and fewer customers. He was using his intelligence to justify and rationalize avoiding going out and seeing more people.

In the seminar he realized that if he wanted to be successful, he would have to become excellent at prospecting. Otherwise, there was no future for him in a sales career. He then made up his mind to read every sales and motivational book he could get his hands on. He constantly listened to audio programs everywhere he was able to on the subject of sales, and he took numerous courses on sales and business.

He would start off first thing in the morning and would prospect all day long until he overcame his fear of it and learned how to do it well. He backed his resolution with persistent and continuous action.

As a result of his overcoming the fear of prospecting, primarily by preparing himself and becoming very good at it, his sales went up and up. Within six months, he was making four times what he'd been earning when he came to my seminar initially.

His company was so impressed that it promoted him into sales management and then transferred him to Los Angeles to open a new branch, where he is now responsible for recruiting, training, and fielding a professional sales force. He has a title, a high income, an expense account, and the respect of everyone around him. He is on the road to success, and the turning point for him came when he realized that he would have to prepare for success by becoming excellent at the parts of his job where he was the weakest.

This person was able to accomplish a lot in a very short time not because of my seminar but because he decided to be honest and objective about his strengths and weakness. He then made the decision himself to correct his weaknesses and become excellent at his profession.

Remember, we live in the Information Age, and knowledge in every field is doubling approximately every two to three years. This means that you must double you knowledge in your field every two to three years just to stay even.

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