What Not Practicing Is Costing You

Imagine a football team saying:

“We don’t practice. We just play games.”

It would be ridiculous.

Yet that’s exactly how a lot of sales teams operate.

We teach salespeople a skill.

Maybe we show them how to ask better questions.

Handle an objection.

Open a cold call.

Conduct discovery.

Then we send them out to try it on a real prospect.

The game becomes the practice.

And the problem with practicing on prospects is that there’s something at stake.

The salesperson doesn’t want to look stupid.

They don’t want to mess up the call.

So when the pressure is on, they go back to what feels comfortable.

The old behavior wins.

That’s why practice matters.

Not another two-hour training session.

Five minutes.

Take one skill.

Put people in pairs.

One person is the salesperson.

One is the prospect.

Try it.

Stop.

Switch.

Try it again.

Make it safe to be bad.

Because that’s another reason salespeople resist practice.

Role-play can feel awkward.

Nobody wants to perform badly in front of their manager or teammates.

So lower the stakes.

Tell them:

The goal isn’t to be good. The goal is to get a rep.

Athletes take thousands of repetitions before something feels natural.

Musicians practice scales.

Actors rehearse.

Yet we expect salespeople to hear something once and immediately perform it with a customer.

Knowing a skill isn’t the same as being able to use it.

If you want your sales team to get better, don’t just teach them.

Give them somewhere safe to practice.