There is a quiet, but very real, revolution taking place. Your customers are slowly transforming, especially if were born before 1982. Your key contacts are slowly being replaced by younger, more tech and social media savvy ones. Survival demands you to learn to work and communicate and interact with them differently.
Instant messaging and social media are becoming the preferred communication method over telephone and email. As a result, cold calling is not nearly effective as it once was, neither are voicemail and email. In addition, if you are not accessible in social media you run the risk of seeming irrelevant and losing market share, and mind share.
The Point Is NOT When You Were Born…
It is that technology and information are changing so fast we need to learn new skills fast to keep pace and adapt. Instead of resisting though, we must learn new skills in cope with a new reality of information overload and fast changing technology. If we ignore this reality we will eventually become relics, replaced by those who do change with the times.
Recently, author Tony Rubleski and I finished recording lesson number 4, Life-Long Learning, the NEW Reality from the New Mind Capture University training series based on his successful Mind Capture series of books.
In the training, Tony outlines Six Reasons Why Life-Long Learning is Critical in today’s fast paced, ever changing business landscape.
- Information is doubling every 4-months
- Fast pace changes in technology
- In the age of Google and instant search, “Ignorance is not bliss!”
- People can see instantly if you’re relevant vs. becoming a relic
- Global competition
- Career and industry changes
But before we set about learning new skill we need to determine which one to focus on
How Do You Know Which Skills You Need to Learn?
- Identify technology and media your customers are using that you are not familiar with. You can start by asking your webmaster to tell you how many visitors visit view your site with a mobile device. Are your customers using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?
- Examine your goals. What are our goals? Are there particular skills you require to meet your goals? If you want to be a successful are you skilled at public speaking? You may need to set aside time for public speaking. Do you need to learn to use social media to connect with a new breed of customer? Taking a class or reading books on how to use social media may be needed.
- Reflect on past performance. We’ve all had projects that have been very successful and not so successful. Which of your skill made them successful, and which ones made them fall short?
- Model others. Who do you admire? What skills do they possess? Most of us admire people who have skills we don’t have. Identify which skills make the people you admire successful.
Now that you know which skills to develop, determine which ones are most important in reaching your goals. The next step is to develop a practical, daily plan take action on learning your new skills.
In a recent US Department of Labor, Bureau of Statistics study of American Time Use, watching television was the number 1 leisure activity accounting for an average 2.7 hours per day. Learning a skill does take time and effort so additional time must be allocated to it. Here are some suggestions for finding time to learn.
Three Ways to Find Time to Learn New Skills
- Start and end each day with a book, 15 minutes per day. At that pace you could read 40 pages per day, or 2 books per month or 24 books in a year!
- Turn idle time into learning time. Cut back on TV and web surfing. and spend the time learning a new skill
- Americans spend an average 25 minutes driving to work. Get audio books and listen to them during your daily commute. At 25 minutes per day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks per year equals 104 hours of idle time that could be repurposed for learning!
No matter when you were born or where you live; information and technology are changing fast, not to mention a global economy and new competition popping up every day. We need to constantly learn new skills to be creative, relevant and adaptive…it is a matter of survival!
What are you learning? What books are you reading? Here is a list of my Top 10 Favorite Books of 2011…
Go ahead! Speak your mind and let me know what your challenges are, I’d love to hear from you.
Suggested reading from the 30 Day Blogging Challenge
Internet Business Success: Manage Your Time
If you wish to build a successful Internet business, you must manage your time effectively. When most people first start out, they are a one person business without much startup capital. If this is your case, you will need to do everything yourself until your business grows enough that you can outsource some of the tasks involved with your on-line business.
http://www.dwwdblog.com/internet-business-success-manage-your-time/
Internet Business Success: Stop Procrastinating
If you are like a lot of people, procrastination may be one of the reasons why you are not more prosperous. Constantly putting off what you need to do results in you becoming further and further behind with everything else as well. Sooner or later something either won’t get finished or you’ll be so short of time that you will rush to complete a project and, as a result, you will not do the best that you are capable of doing.
http://www.dwwdblog.com/internet-business-success-stop-procrastinating/
The key to being successful in business – especially online business – is knowing what you don’t know. Once you do, you have an advantage over everyone else.
http://www.freecomputerclassroom.com/knowing-what-you-dont-know/