How The Next Generation Is Leapfrogging Gen Xer’s

Flicking through the TV I came across a channel with yet another TV cooking show. The hosts were giving their usual potboiler comments about hard the work done and how all contestants deserved a chance, alas the time had come to make the cut… as the camera swung to the contestants I sat up:

Standing in front of the panel were ten young people, very young people, ranging from 8-11 years old!!

Having seen the age of the contestants I wondered why anyone would want to watch a bunch of pre-teens boiling up a pack of instant noodles, or any such simple dish that I surmised might be within the talent range of these youngsters.

As these thoughts lazily rippled through my mind the camera swung to the winning dishes they had prepared; my jaw dropped! These were not the dishes prepared by some kid. These were dishes of a complexity and visual preparation standard normally reserved for a Michelin rated restaurant.

The program, Australia’s Junior Master Chef, is just a sneak preview of things to come.

The Day Internet Crashed The Education Establishment’s Party

Most of Gen X grew up with one certainty: an education was only attainable through an institution/organization that owned the information you wanted to gain.

In other words: information and education was a monopoly business. Only after rigorous pre-examination would you be allowed into the next inner sanctum of information and how-to, provided you paid a handsome fee for it.

Once you had successfully gone through all the curriculum and paid all the fees you were awarded a certificate, diploma, doctorate, etc. This piece of paper in turn made you into a marketable product. You could now go to the next organization/company and apply for a job that would put coins in your pocket.

Does this mean that everyone with a piece of gold-embossed parchment handed out by an education organization was:

1. Really good at what they had been certified for?
2. Totally interested, passionate and innovative about the subject they were now certified at?

The answer is: NO… generations of people got the cert, found the job, paid the mortgage without an iota of passion for their profession.

The internet has blasted away the walls that once made information, knowledge and learning into a monopoly: we can now self-educate through blogs, communities and, most importantly: YouTube.

The Real Question Is: What Turns You On?

A vast swath of younger Gen Y’s are blazing a new path: they are taking their education into their own hands.

• They do so playfully
• They do so willingly
• They do so in their own time
• They do so to follow their own dreams

And they can do so because they have the amassed knowledge of humankind at their fingertips. This knowledge has been de-mystified, de-academized and presented in totally approachable form as videos, chats and blogs.

The main differentiator between these Gen Yer’s and the generations currently running the show is that the Best & Brightest Gen Y’s are actively seeking solutions, knowledge and advise to become masters at their chosen fields at a previously unimaginably young age and speed.

From Singing To Computing, The Leapfrog Is On

A few examples for this trend:

Justin Bieber is at the vanguard of this development. Deciding that singing was his thing he just started doing it. Singing in front of a video camera he started posting his videos on YouTube. Grainy, shaky and ‘unprofessional’ as they might have seemed to be, the videos still hit their audience. Justin Bieber leapfrogged past the whole old-fashioned star-making machinery right into the market. He created his own market and was able to dictate his own terms to the labels.

Anjelo Baligad is a 6-year old from Hawaii whose nom de guerre is Lil Demon. His dance moves have made him a sensation in the YouTube community and have landed him in the hot dance troupe called LXD. Videos posted on YouTube were his schooling, picking up moves, re-combining them and posting his newest discoveries. This new, collaborative, open source way of picking up knowledge has created an accelerated learning spiral, as TED’s Chris Anderson puts it:

We are evolving in internet time

Australia’s Junior Master Chef : as the name of the program implies this is just the Australian version of this format. It will spread to other countries, and with this spread it will create more and more junior culinary masters globally. These master chefs will learn their tips, tricks and strategies by watching TV and internet videos. By the time they are ready to join the working world they won’t need a cooking cert, their dishes, home-made videos and cooking blogs will be their ticket to the future.

Even the hallowed bastions of computing are under attack: a slew of new ready-to-use modular software coding programs are coming on the market. Google App Inventor and Scratch are just 2 examples. Written to work in Lego-like building blocks these coding programs allow you to create your very own tools and applications, no need to study computer science… The only thing required is your interest and willingness!

The Good News Is…

The good news is that this is the century of total freedom of choice. It is the century that will give us the tools to self-expression, productivity and connectivity that will allow us to learn what we want, create what we desire and share it with likeminded people and even earn a living doing so!

Welcome to the century of the Willing, the Leapfroggers and the Game Changers.

Introduction
One of the most crucial steps in transforming a sales team from expected to extraordinary is to break through the Brand Excuse.

The Brand Excuse
The Brand Excuse works the following way: You have branded product/service and hire a sales team. The average salesperson goes out, dutifully presents your brochure, an exhaustive list of features your product/service will provide to the prospect and expects to close a sale.

More often than not the prospect will have a few questions and ask for a cheaper price, telling the salesperson the old story about how the competitors can provide a similar product/service for less…

The salesperson has just created a situation wherein:

a) The brand is suspected of not being strong enough to sell the product
b) The pricing of the brand is suspected of being ‘unreasonably’ high
c) The only viable strategy is to start offering the product at a ‘competitive’ price, thus starting a profit eroding race to the bottom with the competition based on the cheapest price
d) The sales management is being suspected of being out of touch with current ‘market realities’, hence the unrealistically high pricing

Who Is Selling? The Brand or You?
The first pivotal step we take in creating cutting edge sales team is to create a clear differentiation between the individual salesperson and the brand.

Being invited to represent and sell a recognized brand is a privilege!

The company has invested money, time and resources to create a specific brand promise, an image that will help the individual salesperson to establish credibility. The salesperson has the privilege of going into a market armed with a brand that will allow him to present himself as someone representing a large professional organization able to supply an excellent product/service.

The act of selling is the whole responsibility of the salesperson!

Breaking Through Responsibility Deflection Factors
It is not unusual for salespeople to exhibit symptoms of the ‘infallibility syndrome’: they assess themselves as excellent salespeople, their presentation is convincing and really gets the prospect rolling (aka: the salesperson is infallible)…. In their assessment the main source for their inability to close at a higher rate is mainly to be found with the company they represent, such Responsibility Deflection Factors as:

1. Incorrect pricing
2. The product/service itself
3. The management
4. The company’s strategy, systems, etc

To break through these Responsibility Deflection Factors sales teams are taken through a powerful set of de-brief sessions which allow them to clearly assess their real current sales ability.

Creating Outstanding Sales Results: An Excellent Salesperson Sells An Excellent Brand
Having assessed their real current sales ability without the support of the brand each salesperson will now establish a personal sales growth plan, allowing them to learn the specific skills that will propel each one of them to become outstanding salespeople.

This will allow your company to unleash the full sales potential of your team:

A team of excellent salespeople representing an excellent brand who create geometric sales growth!