Avoid Expensive Trial-and-Error

Go For Experience-Smart vs. Book-Smart

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them,

We learn them by doing them.”

Aristotle

Several recent conversations prompted me to think about the value of experience:

A founder shared that he has never worked in sales; and that in preparation for his start-up, he read several books and watched every podcast of a certain sales guru; now he was ready to sell the services of his start-up and build and lead a sales team.
Another founder asked for advice on a networking platform; when it would be best to push for a demo or ask for the sale on his first true outbound lead in a new product vertical.

So, how do you weigh the value of learning from books or chats vs. the benefit of experience? Is it, as Will Schwalbe points out, “…that everything you need to know you can find in a book?”

Or is Andy Matuschak right when he writes, "books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don't realize it?"

It 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.

Overcoming time and distance is a key benefit of theoretical learning from books. It is a telltale sign of a book-smart person that they can share knowledge about historical events and far-away 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 to and stemming from the streets they walk.

This practical experience has its own set of methods and benefits:

Learning by doing: “Learning by doing means learning from experiences resulting directly from one's own actions, as contrasted with learning from watching others perform, reading others' instructions or descriptions, or listening to others' instructions or lectures.” (Hayne W. Reese)

The best example of this is languages. The best way to learn a new language is by use; to speak it, surrounded by native speakers, ideally immersed in the culture on location.

Learning from one’s own mistakes: “No one is immune to making mistakes – we are human, after all! But if we simply apologize and carry on as before, we're in danger of repeating the same errors. When we don't learn from our mistakes, we inflict unnecessary stress on ourselves and on others.” (Mind Tools)

Making a mistake rallies our attention. And it doesn’t have to be a dramatic near-drowning experience when sailing in weather beyond your capabilities. Being wrong on a sales forecast certainly makes us more diligent, attentive, and applying different methods or factors the next time.

Relational-frame learning: “Any objects or events that are relationally framed become verbal – part of the world as known through relational frames. As we frame objects, events, and people through our interactions with the socioverbal community, we elaborate our network of related stimuli and, through transformation of functions, the world increasingly takes on new verbally derived functions, beginning when we first learn to frame words and objects as the same and likely continuing throughout most of our lives.” (newharbinger.com)

Words matter, and as we read, we put each word into a context. Doing so as part of an experience or interaction creates the "right" framing, or at least a "better" framing vis-à-vis the theoretical approach.

Learning through experimentation: “Experimentation is a central practice for groups trying to collaborate more effectively, especially those that are trying to tackle complex problems. In particular, experimentation is a powerful way for a group to learn and improve collectively and quickly.” (fasterthan20.com)

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 experienced rep first, then try pitching to smaller accounts before tackling a big guy, often after weeks or months of crawling and walking.

Learning by immediately applying a new skill: “There's a big difference between absorbing information and putting what you've learned into practice. Without doing the latter, the training you've received will go to waste, so it's important to have a strategy for implementing your learning.” (Forbes Coaches Council)

One of the ways to ensure that new learning is immediately applied is by way of having a feedback buddy. E.g., in a call center setting, two agents paired up as buddies, setting 10 minutes of every day aside to share a new learning or experience and the steps taken to adjust and apply the new skill while holding each other accountable.

My conclusion: Let's try to be book-smart and street-smart. Knowledge from books expands the horizon and lays a foundation. Learning through one’s own experience, doing so continuously, and bringing this proactively to the table every time, creates true expertise.

But back to the above conversations I mentioned: Building and running sales processes and teams without experience is an expensive trial-and-error scenario! Can it be done? Sure, it has been done this way many times. Should it be done? In my opinion, no. Because…

… I frequently hear from Founders that their sales team underperforms, that they had to hire and fire reps again and again, that their sales team is ‘nice’, yet not ‘delivering,’ and that they don’t really understand their salespeople. These are telltale signs of an expensive trial-and-error because of inexperienced sales leadership.
And there is an alternative: The Fractional Sales Leader, 100% of the right sales leadership experience at a fraction of the cost. And they likely pay for themselves simply by avoiding the trial-and-error. Because they have been there and they have done this before.

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Will Schwalbe – The things we can really learn from books

Andy Matuschak – Why books don’t work

Hayne W. Reese – The Learning-by-Doing Principle

Mind Tools – How to Learn From Your Mistakes

Fasterthan20.com – Learning Through Experimentation

Forbes Coaches Council – Put It Into Practice: 14 Actionable Ways to Implement your Learning

Newharbinger.com – Relational Frame Theory 101: An Introduction

Photo by Anne Gosewehr