Learn How to Train [Academy]

Do You Know How To Train?

High School was easy for me, in fact, I never studied much at all. I played sports, had lots of friends, and spent 6-8 weeks of the year, at home, a week at a time, helping my dad on the farm. Back in those day all you had to do was tell the principal your dad needed you to help on the farm and you were excused. I wasn’t the smartest kid in class, but I was a solid B student without ever having to apply myself. That was in High School, but college was a real wake-up call.

I enrolled at South Dakota State University, majoring in Agronomy, and quickly discovered there was no easy road in college. Professors didn’t care if I came to class or did the work. I never missed class during the day, I studied every night and had a part-time job where I worked 20-30 hours a week during whatever free time I could muster. I needed the money. 

Despite my hard work ethic, I ended up on probation after the first semester.

It’s not that I wasn’t smart enough, it was that I didn’t know how to study.

That’s right.

I had never studied in High School and didn’t know how to go about it in college. Was I supposed to learn from the textbook, listen to the lecture or take notes in class to learn the subject matter and prepare for exams?

Every professor was different. Some tested based on their lectures, some took it word for word from the textbook and others came up with ways to apply the material. I decided my only way to survive was to write down every word my professors said in class, listen closely as they answered questions and ask questions myself.

That’s how I learned and studied for tests.

It worked.

I clawed my way up to the Dean’s list.

That became a valuable lesson when I started learning how to sell seed. There were plenty of books on how to sell, but not a single one on how to sell seed. Seed is a special kind of sale no one seemed to have figured out how to do except by trial and error. I developed a system for selling seed through the experience of winning and losing. I learned to focus on what farmers really wanted and how to get it for them. My sales skyrocketed. That system was invaluable when I started the RC Thomas company and began teaching others how to sell seed.

Sales reps who attended my CAMP or Blueprint programs always commented it was the most valuable sales training session they’d ever attended. I would love to take credit for being a fantastic lecturer, but my real secret was knowing many of my students struggled to learn as I did, they didn’t know how to study. So I offered them multiple ways to grasp the concepts from lectures, to interactive exercises, to tests, to video and so on. Plus, students didn’t realize, the reason I left so many blanks in my handouts for them to complete was that it was my way of teaching them to take notes. Every student got a special notebook to take notes in at the opening of my sessions but many of those notebooks ended up with one or two lines written in them by the end of class.  That’s why I made sure my manuals served as their notebooks, forcing them to write things down. Here are a few tips how to study and learn faster.

1. Create a system for taking notes.  I have a close friend who is a seed sales rep. He carries a bound, hard-cover note book with him everywhere. He takes notes in almost every situation he’s in. He has developed a system that’s easy, compact, and the hard cover gives him something firm to write on.  
2. Value your time. If you believe your time is at least as valuable as the person lecturing, you will take notes.     
3. When given the opportunity, look over the material before coming to class. When the material is available, it’s most helpful to study and even outline it prior to the lecture.
4. Sit up front. Make sure you come early to sessions so you can get a really good seat close to the lecturer. Most students who don’t sit up front are afraid of being called on or asked questions during the session. Those who sit up front, learn more than those who don’t because they’re surrounded by others who are upfront for the same reason they are, to learn as much as possible.
5. Write down everything the lecturer writes on a board or easel. Those are most often key points and highlights of the session.  
6. Stop believing you’re there to learn what you can during the session. You’re in the session to gather as much information as possible for use later. Learn to listen and write at the same time. As long as you’re comprehending what’s going on, you can write AND listening.
7. Use your note pace to control the session pace. Some speakers talk faster than others and that’s where using abbreviations and short-cuts come in handy. But as you take notes, if you find yourself getting behind, ask the lecture to stop and repeat something. Sometimes a good note taker in the crowd slows a speaker who was talking too fast and it helps everyone in the room, not just you.
8. Watch for lists and numbers. If a lecture says there are 3 reasons for this…get ready to write down 3 numbers with a reason beside each one.
9. Never use a sentence where you can use a phrase.  Never use a phrase where you can use a word.
10. Don’t bother recording lectures.  Lectures on tape are almost impossible to use for review. Written notes can be glanced over quickly and any part of the lecture can be referred to in an instant. Tapes take too long and it’s very hard to find the sections of the tape you may be looking for when you want them.
11. Write class summaries at the end of class.

Make sure when you’re working hard to be a better seed seller, you know how to study…it will put you far ahead of those who don’t know how to study or don’t study at all.

Happy Selling, 

Rod