Practice Like You Play – Deion Sanders

Deion Sanders is undoubtedly one of the most gifted athletes of all time. As a college athlete at Florida State University, he was a standout in baseball, football, and track. Afterward, he became one of the few athletes to play two professional sports simultaneously. In 1989, he actually hit a major league home run and scored a touchdown in the NFL in the same week. That may never happen again. Not only is it rare to find an athlete with his talent, but it’s even more rare to find such a gifted athlete who practices the way Sanders did. His work ethic matched his talent.

Every Day Counts

One of the biggest mistakes an athlete can make is to get too comfortable relying on talent. Natural ability might propel one at the local level, but it’s only a matter of time before an athlete faces competitors with equal ability. At that time, talent must be coupled with work ethic if the athlete wishes to excel at the highest level. Deion Sanders is a prime example of this premise.

As a 7-year-old child, Sanders told his mother that he’d one day make it rich so that she would never need to work another day. He never stopped working until that promise turned true. There are stories of Deion outworking his teammates that date back to his childhood and continue throughout his professional career.

As stated by former NFL teammate Kevin Mathis,

“We couldn’t even get any reps in practice because Deion would take them all… He practiced like it was a game.”

And Sanders didn’t just apply his work ethic to the field. He was also fanatical with his film study. He was known to repeatedly study the intricate details of his opponents in an attempt to gain an advantage.

Former teammate Darren Woodson actually compared Deion’s film study to that of a boxer.

“It was like he was a boxer preparing for a fight. He knew everything about the dude across from him.”

Wisdom From Deion Sanders

It’s one thing to read quotes from Deion’s former teammates, but it’s even better to listen to the man himself. Below is a recent video of Deion Sanders addressing some of the current athletes at Florida State University. The brief clip is less than 2 minutes but well worth a look. Deion’s passion remains undeniable. His competitive fire still burns within.

Video Link: Wisdom From Deion Sanders

Deion Sanders certainly subscribes to the idea that you become what you do. In other words, if you slack in practice, you will eventually play like a slacker. Conversely, if you practice at your best, you will eventually play at your best.

Final Thoughts

As I’ve said before, first you make your habits and then your habits make you. Don’t just take my word for it however. Listen to one of the greatest athletes of all time. Deion Sanders might be known for his freakish ability, but we might never know his name if it wasn’t for the relentless work that he put in day after day throughout his career.

Regardless of your goals, never acclimate yourself to slacking off in practice. You need to show up each day willing to work. One of the most surefire ways to improve is by repeatedly practicing to be the absolute best that you can be. Giving everything you have to better yourself is perhaps the safest investment you will ever make.

Regardless of the outcome, you’ll always come out a better version of yourself.

+++++

“Call it cocky. Call it arrogant. Call it what you want… I came here to be the best ever.” – Deion Sanders

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Don’t Disadvantage Yourself In Your Deal Strategy

You’ve invested time in qualifying your deal.  Now you want to move the customer through their buying process–maximizing your ability to win when they make a decision.

At this point, it’s critical to build a strong deal strategy.  Without this, you’re lost.

But I’m amazed at how bad most people’s deal strategies are.  They don’t understand the customer, both the organization and the individuals involved.  They focus on their products and solutions, trying to demonstrate superiority over competition.

They haven’t taken the time to research, question, probe the customer.

• What’s driving the need to change?
• How did they get to this place?  Is there a problem they just became aware of, did they have a major miss in achieving goals, have their customers changed, have their competitors changed?
• What happens if they don’t change?
• When do they need to have a solution in place?
• How will they justify the decision they’ve made in order to get approval from management?
• How does this effort contribute to the attainment of the overall corporate objectives?
• Who else is impacted by this decision?  How are they involved?  What are their roles?
• What are they looking for in a solution and why are those things important to them?
• What alternatives are they considering?  What do they like about each one?
• How will they decide what to do?  What’s the target date for a decision?  What’s driving that target date?
• And the list goes on…..

All of this information is critical to understand how you can be most helpful and most relevant as the customer goes through their buying process.

All of this information helps you create value at every step.  Understanding their point of view, what’s driving them, enables us to position what we do in the context of their business and business outcomes.

All of this keeps the focus to the customer and what they care about.

Yet, I’m constantly amazed at how few sales people ask the right questions, listen, drill down, probe, validate, and verify.  Most often, they ask a minimal number of questions, make huge assumptions, hearing what they want to hear–all so they can move into pitch mode.

Too often, sales people disadvantage themselves in their deal strategies by focusing their positioning versus the competition, not on what the customer is trying to achieve.

While we focus on our competitive positioning, the customer struggles with the buying process, and solving their problem.  Competitive comparisons are the least important of their concerns.

Yet we focus on the competition, not what’s most important to the customer.

There’s a simple way to build and execute winning deal strategies. It’s to focus on the customer, what they are trying to achieve, and how they are going to solve their problem.  It’s what they care about, it’s what drives the highest win rates!

Related Posts:

• There’s More To The Discovery Process Than Identifying
• You Lose Because Of What You Don’t Do
• Stop Letting Your Competitor Define Your Sales Strategy!
• The “Competitor” Question
• Who Are We Selling Against?

No related posts.

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Games of the Day

The Cubs lead the Pirates by three games in the NL Central as the teams open a three game series in Pittsburgh. Jason Hammel faces Gerrit Cole in game one. Hammel has yet to allow a home run in 24 innings this season, after giving up 23 in 170 2/3 innings in 2015. That helped him to start this season with a 0.75 ERA. Cole makes just his second start of 2016 at home, where he is 20-10 for his career in 39 starts.

Washington travels to Kansas City for interleague action against the World Champions. Gio Gonzalez faces Edinson Volquez. Gonzalez is off to a great start, posting a 1.42 ERA. His 25 K in 25 1/3 innings helped him to a .196/.250/.239 opponents slash line. Only two of the 18 hits against him went for extra bases. Volquez allowed more hits, 30 in 29 2/3 innings, but like Gonzalez, most were singles. Three of the four extra base hits came with the bases empty.

Enjoy!

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Tracking the Cy

The Cy Young Award race in each league is currently a battle between two players who put some distance between themselves and the rest of the pack. Chris Sale leads the majors in Tom Tango Cy Young tracker points after his sixth win Sunday. With a high innings total and a high strikeout total, currently holds 23.5 points. Two points behind him in the AL, due to his extremely low ERA, is Jordan Zimmermann. Zimmermann was not seen as the ace of the Tigers staff going into the season, so he’s about 10 innings behind Sale as he started later in the rotation.

In the National League, Clayton Kershaw‘s 14 K shutout was not enough to catch Jake Arrieta. Arrieta, with his 5-0 record and four earned runs allowed holds 22.2 points. Kershaw pitched 10 more innings than Arrieta with 22 more K, but also allowed six more earned runs.

Vincent Velasquez is third in the NL at 18.6 points, while Sales’s teammate Jose Quintana comes in third in the AL with a 16.5 mark.

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Weekly Look at Offense

After four weeks of baseball, MLB averages 8.48 runs per game in 2016 as compared to 8.45 through four weeks of the 2015 season. Although scoring is the same, the seasons achieve that level in different ways. Walks and home runs are up. There are nearly 0.3 more home runs per game and 0.5 more walks per game. Pitchers, however, are striking out one more batter per game, and that means other hits are down about 0.2 per game. In the end, more batters are reaching base 24.0 per game compared to 23.5 last year. I’m somewhat surprised that scoring is not much higher than the same point in 2015. The majors did hit better with men on base and with men in scoring position in 2015 through the same period. It looks like there is potential for 2016 to pull way ahead of 2015.

You can follow the weekly run scoring in this spreadsheet, showing the ups and downs in scoring by week.

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Monday Update

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

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Our Sale Can’t Be Beat!

Chris Sale continued his undefeated streak on Sunday, stretching his season start to 6-0 as the White Sox down the Orioles 7-1. He didn’t pitch as well as usual, lasting just 5 1/3 innings, allowing five hits and four walks. The Orioles, however, only scored one run as they went 1 for 9 in the game with runners in scoring position. Sale won his last two games by scored of 1-0 and 2-1, so on a day he was off, it was nice for the offense to help him out.

In his career, Sale has won 48.4 percent of his starts (not decisions) (122 starts, 59 wins). If he gets another 27 starts and wins at that rate, he would collect another 13 wins for 19 total. If the White Sox offense keeps performing well, however, he could easily push back the 20 win level.

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