The Feynman Technique is not a sales technique. It’s not a psychology trick. And it’s not a way to directly generate revenue. But it is something you can use to improve how your salespeople sell.
Richard Feynman is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist known for his integral contributions to foundational theories of quantum mechanics. He knows the value of taking what is complex and making it simple. With that principle, he developed a four-step learning process now called the Feynman Technique.
The Feynman Technique is a four-step approach to learning that goes beyond simple knowledge to help you fully develop mastery of a concept. The four steps:
It’s no secret that I believe sales is an admirable profession and one that is challenging, complex, and highly skilled. The best salespeople aren’t born: They’re made.
To master the art and science of sales, salespeople and their managers have to be constantly learning and growing. At Membrain, we make learning and growing an integral part of how we operate at every level.
Peer training supports all four steps of the Feynman Technique.
Here are some of the ways we incorporate Feynman Technique concepts into our work.
Once a month, our teams gather for a “brain meld.” We ask a member of our team to put together a training on a relevant topic, then we gather the whole team to learn from them.
On the surface, this benefits everyone because everyone gets an opportunity to learn something new.
But the person who benefits most is actually the person doing the training. The opportunity to teach provides access to the first and fourth steps of the Feynman Technique. We encourage them to use steps two and three while developing the training.
During sales conversations, we encourage our salespeople to take notes. But not just any notes. We ask them to write down EXACTLY what prospects say, word for word when it’s important.
Because when you take notes in your own words, you are not writing down what was actually said but rather what you heard through the lens of your own biases. When you go back to look at your notes later, you then read your notes through another filter of your own lens.
This can lead to happy ears (the prospect says: “We’re looking for a solution to this problem,” and the salesperson hears, “We’re seriously considering your solution”), poor understanding of the prospect’s needs (the prospect says: “We need a way to manage our sales pipeline” and the salesperson hears “We need AI to manage our sales pipeline”), and missed opportunities (the prospect says: “I’ll run this by procurement and we should be good to go” and the salesperson hears: “I just need to wait and this is a done deal”).
This can happen even if you’re taking word-for-word notes, but when the notes are exact, you can look back at them and see what you missed, and so can your coach and peers.
Additionally, writing things down forces us to be concrete and exact, which in turn can help us see what we don’t see in the moment. And it helps us to fully absorb what is being said so that we can understand and learn from it.
Recently, one of our salespeople was receiving coaching from a sales consultant. He reviewed the coach’s sales calls for inspiration and found a questioning model he liked for helping a customer come up with financial ROI.
The employee converted this questioning model into a coaching card within Membrain so that other salespeople could learn and replicate the model.
When he shared what he was doing with me, he realized that by writing the method down to share with others, he had learned it himself at a deeper level.
Peer training supports all four steps of the Feynman Technique. It allows employees to think about how they will teach concepts to someone else. It allows them to find gaps and fix them. It encourages simplifying and organizing concepts. And gives them the opportunity to convey them to others.
Are you incorporating aspects of the Feynman Technique in your sales organization? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.
Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn
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