In this clip, I ask teacher, blogger, and presenter, Matt Miller, how we can inspire the sales people or buyers who don't want to learn.
Learn what he has to say in this clip.
Carole Mahoney: So what do you do like, with the kids who don't want to clean the bathroom with the sales people who maybe don't want to learn or with the buyers who maybe don't want to learn, what are some of the things that you can do in your role as a teacher to either inspire them to learn or try to get them to see things differently?
Matt Miller: Yeah, I've always fallen back on that commonly used definition of insanity, doing the same thing to get a different result is insanity, right?
Carole Mahoney: Yeah.
Matt Miller: And I've seen it, walking up and down the hallways of my school and looking into classrooms and seeing the kids looking like this. And every day I walk by, they look like this, they are just totally disconnected. And the teacher's standing in the front doing the exact same thing. And I go, how is this possible?
I heard somebody say once that if things aren't going the way that you want, and I think this applies in sales if you're not getting the results that you want, definitely goes in education. If your students aren't learning in the way that they want, they say there are things you can control. And there are things you can't control. What you can't control are the students. And in schools, a lot of times we like to think that we can punish kids into things or we can coerce them into things. But the reality is that they may comply until you're gone, but are we actually changing their hearts? And so the real only thing that I think that I can do to effect that is to change myself. I only have control of myself.
And so that's where I'm going to try to do the proverbial lead the horse to water and make it want to drink instead of trying to dunk its face into the water. That's kind of illegal in schools too. By the way, I believe so-
Carole Mahoney: Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure it's illegal in corporate as well. Pretty much illegal.
Matt Miller: Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that's the thing that I've always tried to do is, how can I see things from the student's perspective or in this case, how can I see things from the buyer's perspective, and see what is it that they need, what's going to engage them? What's going to catch their eye? And we try different things. I kind of feel like in the classroom when we do this, it's almost like we're taking on the role of a scientist.
A scientist creates a hypothesis and does tests and then they look at the results and if the results were successful, they figure out why it was so they can use that strategy again. And then if it wasn't successful, they try to figure out why so that they can learn from it and move on.
I've always felt like my chances of trying something new, looking the results, taking the good from the good and learning from the bad, that I have so much better chance of reaching my students. Or in this case, reaching the clients. Than if I continue to do the same thing over and over again that's had mediocre results and hopes that maybe this time it will be better.
Carole Mahoney: Yeah. And that's one of the things too. And I think one of things that happens to managers, and maybe this happens to teachers as well, is that they'll look at the results and say, okay, I didn't get what it is that I was looking for, but they have no idea how they even got there to what it is that they need to go back and tweak. So they're just looking at the results and some sales managers, it's like, "Okay, you didn't meet your quota last month. What are you going to do to meet it this month?" is not exactly teaching.
Matt Miller: Right, exactly.
Carole Mahoney: And fear definitely doesn't work. And I talked to managers a lot about having an understanding of what's going to motivate and drive that person to make any kind of behavioral changes because that's the only way it's going to happen.
Matt Miller: Yeah, yeah. Can I touch on that real quick?
Carole Mahoney: Yeah.
Matt Miller: Now I think a lot of times in schools students are like this and I think that children in schools, they obviously grow up to be adults in the workforce and whether we're bigger or we're little, a lot of the same stuff happens and they look at those results. You get this test back and you know you've got an F and it's like bleeding red ink or you get your standardized test scores back and you're below, and you're in this low percentile and all of a sudden they start to take it upon themselves as personal defeat and then it becomes part of their identification of themselves and focusing on those results.
Just like you said, don't get them anywhere. Giving them some strategies they can try to improve. Again, looking at it like that scientist, let's try something else and see if it works. And if it does work, great and if it doesn't work, let's learn from it. That's actually constructed. That's actually going to drive change. And sometimes talking about the results and being frustrated about the results and venting about the results makes you feel better. It doesn't actually change the results.
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