Olympics Lessons for Sales

The 2024 Summer Olympics is a great way to find inspiration from elite athletes, who (like sales professionals) are competitive people with a drive to win. When it comes to winning, talent and luck are helpful ingredients, but consistent growth and success rely heavily on practice.

An appearance at the Olympics is the culmination of strategic practice, training, continuous feedback and encouragement from coaches, expert advice, and building the right knowledge and mindset. Here’s how we can apply Olympic-level practice to our sales talent.

1. Practice is what separates good from great.

Practice accounts for 80% of the difference between amateur and professional athletes. Talent alone simply isn’t enough. To be at Olympic level, athletes must channel competitive energy beyond the match and into strategic training to achieve mastery. This may seem obvious, but how often do we expect to become masters after only occasional efforts in our training or practice? 

The reality? You can’t build a world-class sales organization with only sporadic training and practice. Continuous learning needs to be part of your organization’s DNA – especially in technical sales where the product is always evolving, along with the competitive landscape and customer pain points. Even the most seasoned sales professionals need to keep learning and practicing – not just to keep pace, but to keep growing and improving as well. 

2. Success looks like an iceberg to outsiders.

People tend to celebrate the results more than what it took to get there, simply because that’s the part that is most visible. The audience only experiences the Olympics race, the photo finish, the triumphant music during the medal ceremony – not the hours and hours of training it took to get there. We now celebrate Simone Biles as the most decorated gymnast in history, with 37 Olympics and World Championship medals, not as the aspiring Olympian who started putting in serious training hours with a coach at age eight.

If you really want to celebrate the results, find ways to recognize and celebrate the less-visible effort your team puts into practice. This also happens to be one of the most effective ways to build trust. 

3. You need to get in the pool.

Imagine how absurd it would be to train an aspiring Olympic swimmer by only showing them videos of Olympic swimmers and pictures of pools. Olympic swimmers need to get in an Olympic-size pool to effectively practice their form and measure their performance. Elite performance can only follow real, consistent experience. 

Similarly, you can’t gain skills in a new technology through screenshots and videos alone. Watching a video might give you an idea of what’s possible, but it won’t allow you to build your own demonstrable skill. To become a competent user, you need to immerse yourself in the actual product environment. But hands-on training can be hard to fit in a busy salesperson’s schedule, especially if they are traveling. Virtual training labs are an accessible option that can be done anywhere, anytime, while providing tangible hands-on experience. In this case, you can take the pool with you.

4. Make a safe space to fail.

A gymnast learning a new routine isn’t going to land perfectly every time. That’s why coaches and training facilities put strategic measures in place to make the environment as safe as possible. When there’s a soft spot to land, it’s a lot easier to take risks and learn from mistakes. This is critical for effective training, even if learners aren’t taking on gravity-defying flips! 

So how can you remove the fear of negative consequences in your training program as well as reward practice, iteration, and resilience? Start by creating a psychologically safe place and then back that up with tools and processes. As an example, today’s hands-on virtual labs offer realistic environments without the consequences of making a mistake in the actual software. “Modern labs utilize active learning. Active learning is more engaging, motivating, and drives a higher level of retention and skill acquisition as learners must continuously assess, comprehend, and make decisions,” explains Corey Hynes, executive chairman at Skillable.

5. Keep score: Use data to measure and validate performance.

Olympians need to measure their performance and receive feedback throughout the training process to continually improve and stay competitive. Tracking training routines and performance metrics gives athletes data-driven feedback that can be used for real-time adjustments as well as tangible results to share with coaches and mentors for third-party perspectives.

Microsoft is working with some athletes to track data on their sleep, nutrition, mood, and self-care going into the 2024 Olympics. This data allows them to tweak every factor that might get them to gold. Similarly, hands-on virtual labs provide high-fidelity, accurate skills data so you know exactly how well your sales team can sell your products and where they may need some additional training. This is helpful when launching to new markets, when launching new products, or after an acquisition, as was the case for Quest Software – a software development company that successfully reskilled, certified, and validated the job-readiness of 1,000 sales partners with virtual labs in the wake of a peak-pandemic acquisition. 

6. Channel Olympics training inspiration into your sales force.

Beyond talent, hands-on training has always been essential to Olympics success. If you’re looking to take your sales organization from good to great, take a cue from these elite athletes and consider hands-on learning as the next step in your journey.

Mark Mangelson is chief revenue officer at Skillable.