How Do You Not Know The Answer To That Question?

If you have been following our newsletters you know that we have a monthly video feature titled "How Do You Not Know the Answer To That Question?" and I have to tell you they are a blast to record! Our readers pose the questions and all I have to do is to come up with an answer. The title itself comes from a reaction I have every now and then when someone asks a question in a workshop or training program that I think people who are sales or sales management professionals should know the answer to.

The reality is that all of the questions are good ones! And ... at some point in my career I didn't know the answers to the questions either. That said, there are questions we all should know the answer to as we pursue becoming the best of the best in our field. The quality of the question depends more on which of three different categories the sales person falls into. Are they a UI, UC or CC? Allow me to explain.

Every one of us falls into one of these following three categories;

• UI's - are what we call "Unconscious Incompetent's"! They aren't any good at what they do and they have no clue that they aren't any good. We all know folks that fit into this category. They tend to go about their sales activities without any semblance of knowing what they are doing and they see no need to try and get any better. They think they are incredible and the fact they aren't delivering the goods is always someone else's fault! When they ask questions, and they rarely do, they are usually off topic, off base and usually want me to respond ... DUH!
• UC's - are what we call "Uncoiscious Competent's"! They are good at what they do but they don't know why? They're level of performance runs from below average at times to excellent at others. The reason for the variance comes from the fact that they don't really know what it is they do that determines why they perform well. That creates two separate challenges. 1) They can't lead, teach, mentor anyone else to improve their performance because they don't know how they do it themselves and 2) when things require change or adaptations they can't make them because, again, they don't know themselves well enough to make the adjustments! When they ask a question it can be a really good one but their reasons for asking the question aren't clear and application becomes difficult because the don't understand how it fits into to their own processes they don't understand.
• CC"s - are what we call "Conscious Competents"! These are always our top performers and our most consistent performers. They are good at what they do and they know why they are good at it! They can easily teach, mentor and coach others to do the same because they "own their own solutions, insights, strategies and tactics" and have a systematic way of continued development of those skill sets! When this pro asks a question they have a good reason for it and when provided with a good answer can put it into practice immediately!

The truth is I have been (and probably still am) all three of these in different areas of my professional and personal life! I aspire to be a "CC" in every part of my life that matters. A lot of my expertise has been developed through my career because people have asked me a ton of great questions that challenged me to get better every day! So keep sending in those questions cause I need them to improve and I'll keep trying to answer the "How Do You Not Know the Answer To That Question?" each month!

Jim Jacobus, CSP
CEO Champion Education Resources
www.ratedr4results.com
jim@r4ronline.com Posted by Jim Jacobus, CSP at 4:31 PM