I love to read, especially about fitness, training, and business
Yesterday I was reading an article about Navy Seal Training.
The Seal’s training is legendary. Conventional thinking would be that once you learn and repeat the skill several times, it’s now a learned skills.
Not so in the Seals.
The reason is that their training consists of “perishable skills.” Skills that if not used, are lost.
It’s the same in business.
So many of the skills we need to use to build a business, become rusty from lack of use.
Take our classes and teaching schedules for example. We’ve all noticed how the more we teach the better and easier it gets. Take a two-week vacation and the first few days back are a bit awkward, then with practice, things settle out a bit.
And teaching is something we do routinely. The problem is far more pronounced with skills we don’t usually perform daily, like sales and marketing.
I’m going to focus on sales as an example. Since we don’t hold sales meetings several times every day, the skills gets lost. Then a great prospect comes along and we find our presentation “rusty.”
What to do about it?
Practice is the short answer. How? Just like the Navy Seals practice on days when they don’t have a real mission, in a mock presentation.
Most business owners won’t do this, but the ultra successful do.
You can practice with a live person, in front of a mirror, by yourself, or with a designated partner who has been coached to provide lots of resistance and objections.
My favorite is with a partner that has been coached to be difficult.
Then when a real sales opportunity comes along, everything flows along seamlessly.
The Navy Seals will tell you that some of their practice days are much more difficult than their real missions. That same can be true for us.
