Do you think practice makes perfect?
Do you find sometimes that when you make a sales call or do a sales presentation it feels quite clunky? What you’re lacking is probably not talent but practice!
In his book Bounce, Matthew Syed talks about the myth of talent and the power of practice. If you are looking to improve your performance or your team’s his book is definitely worth a read. Matthew dispels the myth that success is all to do with talent by relating it to a wide range of areas and skills where we think it’s definitely all based on talent. The proof comes a lot from his sports examples because we can all relate to them but it’s so applicable to business and Sales too.
I even have to remind myself to just pick the phone up and practice if I’m finding it hard to get things moving and grow my own business !
I have my own very good example of this, a sports one, from when I used to show jump. How could I be so good one week and so bad the next? On the same horse in the same sort of competition.
The Power of Practice
Well it all came down to how much I practiced. In the weeks when I had a lesson [with a really good coach!], had practiced at the yard once or twice and been to a competition recently it was all just so easy – it just happened! That is power of practice.
Purposeful Practice
However, with business as well as sport you have to schedule the practice to make sure it happens. And make sure you have a coach or mentor to help make sure that your practice is, as Matthew Syed calls it, purposeful, with rigorous feedback from an expert who’s overcome the same challenges that you are facing. When you see those amazing sports people beat world records or win gold it’s not talent it’s hours of purposeful practice.
I really recommend you read Matthews book. It’s a really easy interesting read, not steeped in technical stuff just in reality with some really interesting examples. And then get out there and practice whether it’s picking up the phone making another new proposal to show jumping in a new competition!
If you’d like to learn more about how you can embed purposeful practice into your business then let’s have a chat. You can book a complimentary session with me right here – Discovery Call with Cathy – just click the link.