Call the action, become a skill.

Right now I am trying to learn a skill. Sales skills: How to do sales.

Frankly it’s been hard going as my only source of learning has been books and lectures on how to do it.

Well NOW I discover that you can’t learn a skill just by learning about it. This should be no surprise – if I ask how you learned to ride a bike, I doubt you would say ‘I read a book and was capable straight away.’

It turns out that even with a wordsy skill like sales training, this is impossible. The part of our brain that processes information is a completely different part to the one that learns skills.

I heard of a patient who had damage to his hippocampus, so couldn’t form new memories, and then started learning the piano. He could not remember what a piano was, but now had the skills to play one!

What this tells me is that to learn skills, you need to practice. Get people to DO something, to transfer that knowledge from the Hippocampus to the Frontal Lobe to become skills.

So instead of presenting dry information, to get people to remember you and take action, set a goal of some importance and prospect of failure, provide them with the knowledge they need, and let them work out the solution.

The emotions become heightened so the memory parts work better, and whatever they just did to solve the problem immediately becomes a tool in their skills section.

Okay, sure Stu, but what can we do with that information?

Well – you know how you’re supposed to talk about your business as a story of benefits instead of information about features? Yeah, this is that.

Rewrite your website so that it doesn’t just provide information, but presents ACTION. It tells the story of them doing practical stuff, and then getting rewards for it.

You could give them an exercise to do, like check their teeth, go for a walk, taste the water coming from their tap, or you could give that clear Call To Action that we’ve heard so much about, and have a conversation with you.

How about you do that right now – crack open your own website and look for what is written as a list of inert adjectives and nouns, and rewrite them as practical benefits and actions to do.

Go! Do that and see what happens. Go!