Considered one of the greatest soccer teams in the world, Spain’s La Roja uses a simple drill to hone and perfect their players’ skills. This drill, known as the Rondo (“Piggy in the Middle” in the U.S.), has the team form a circle with two players in the middle. The circle quickly passes the soccer ball back and forth while the two players in the middle attempt to intercept. This fast paced drill enables the players to hone their reaction times and improve their ability to pass in tight quarters. Rain or shine, the Spaniards run this drill before every single practice and game, repeatedly.
We use a similar ideology during our three-week new hire training programs, which are more than just times set aside to relay product information, but to create an environment for our new sales people to practice, practice, and practice. Looking back on a recent training class, the new hires not only pitched the products, but also had to do so repeatedly until perfecting each pitch to the point the pitches became second nature. It is a well known fact that if one practices specific actions and reactions a certain way, they are far more likely to perform the same way on “Game Day.” So, we had the new hires memorize sales pitches and repeat the steps verbatim. A new hire told me our role plays felt like a scene out of, “The Miracle on Ice,” where Kurt Russell’s character Herb Brooks drilled his team with “suicides” and kept blowing his whistle while yelling “Again! Again! Again!” Although our tactics on repetition were similar, it was more than just having the new hires pitch the product again and again; they had to pitch it perfectly or they had to start again. Our ideology was that just because you’re practicing pitches all day, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to perfect them until you are performing the correct actions over and over again. This not only reinforces the permanence of good behaviors and habit, but also enables you to respond in stressful situations when you’re in the OR and present the product like it was second nature.
With that said, after a training or a sales meeting with tenured reps, I often am amazed when I get into the field with a TM how those “good” behaviors they could have perfected by practicing, have been tweaked or replaced with behaviors that do not get the desired results. It goes back to not only practicing, but doing so with purpose. The concept of the 10,000 Hour Expert Rule, popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” states becoming an expert or perfecting a skill requires 10,000 hours of practice. However, if you spend thousands of hours performing and practicing incorrect behaviors, you’ll just become better at doing something incorrectly. In the grand scheme of things, it is not sufficient to just practice for 10,000 hours; rather, in order to become an expert, you must practice deliberately, with feedback, while always seeking to correct and improve upon errors. In other words, you are seeking perfect practice! If you’re serious about your business and your sales success, you owe it to yourself to take practice seriously and remember, if you continue to make the same mistakes without correcting them, you wont reach your full potential.
One of the greatest soccer teams has the belief that practicing the fundamentals every day leads to greatness; we can learn from this. Once we leave a sales training or meeting where we learn about a new product or the skills necessary to effectively sell it, we must continue to practice with the intent to improve and master those skills. Also, while practicing with your manager or peers, be careful to approach perfection correctly by seeking to improve your performance with each try. Understand that you will not be perfect all the time, and instead of becoming frustrated or quitting, learn from your errors and continue to improve. Remember, you will perform as you practice, because practice doesn’t make perfect, but perfect practice does. With perfect practice comes perfect execution, success, and an increase in commissions!
