My final three years of playing baseball at South Merritt Island Little League were spent playing for the Astros (sponsored by Merritt Island Air Conditioning). In those three years, we had a combined record of 51-9. When I was 12, we won the Brevard County Championship, which was a tournament of champions from 18 different leagues. The unique thing about our performance was that our team was different every year - the 12-year-olds would move onto Babe Ruth League and we had to draft younger players to replace them. However, one thing was the same for all 60 of those regular season games (and the dozen or so post-season games) …
Our coach, Tom Williams, had us meet two hours before every game to take batting practice. That might sound like a normal routine, but not in Little League in 1981. No one did this. We would show up to the games loose and more importantly, with our muscle-memory-neurons firing. Yes, we had good pitchers and defense, but our offense was deadly, and I believe it’s because of our batting practice. From those three teams, only five of us went on to make the Merritt Island High School baseball teams (Jim Buie played for Satellite Beach High School, doesn’t really count, now does it?) so we weren’t overly-talented, but we were always loosened up and ready for the game. How many times have you left a sales call and thought: “If I could only do that one over again?” Remember the difference between the second time you gave a presentation and the first? I bet you were 10X smoother and charismatic by the third or fourth time. Imagine if you never had to do “that one over again”, or never gave that rusty presentation for the first time. How much more successful would you be? Well, guess what? You don’t have to practice on your customers or prospects. Much like Mr. Williams had the Astros do almost 40 years ago (ouch), you can loosen up and get your neurons firing before your presentations, sales calls, site walks, etc. All you’ve got to do is role play.
I got the idea for this post yesterday when I was with a sales team of a visitor management company. We spent 90 minutes role playing, and one of the sales people commented: “Man, I wish I had a demo right now because I’m ready to go!”
Not everyone can have a sales trainer facilitate role playing every month, but you don’t need that. Ideally, your boss will embrace this and have your team do it on a regular basis. However, you don’t need that either. The next best scenario is to have a partner with whom you can practice. However, you don’t need that either. All you really need to do is visualize. Yep, that’s it. While all the above situations are better than visualizing, they’re not always practical. All you need to visualize is a reasonable amount of concentration and a few minutes. See the audience, smell the conference room, imagine the questions, and deliver. Make your mistakes and correct them before your meeting. Loosen those muscles and watch your performance soar.
