Every once in a while, something special happens on the sports scene that really captures our imaginations and lights up our emotions.
For many of us, we experienced one such moment this weekend when Tiger Woods won the Masters.
First of all, for anyone who has experienced nerve pain in the back and legs, you know that it can paralyze you and completely ruin your life.
Tiger could not get out of bed without help in the morning, and he pretty much had to lay on a couch all day and not move as he experienced the worst of his back issues. After several surgeries and relapses, he finally found a doctor who was able to fuse vertebrae and remove the pain, but that was just the beginning of his comeback.
Training Like a Champion
From there, he had to rebuild his game, something that experts thought was impossible at his age, particularly since the next generation of golfers, whom he had inspired by the way, had become ever stronger and more powerful than him along the way.
That meant Tiger had to hit both the gym, and the links, in order to even have a chance to compete. But Tiger being Tiger took the challenge.
According to colleagues, he spent his days doing two things . . . working out and practicing at the range and on the course. His workouts were legendary . . . pushing himself to the limit on every rep in which he said he loved experiencing the burn, and hitting hundreds of thousands of putts, chips irons and drives.
He said that at first, he lived in mortal fear that the back pain would return with any given shot, but eventually he regained confidence in his physical strength, and he was able to go full blast on the ball striking side.
Mental Fortitude
Perhaps most importantly of all, Tiger regained his confidence and his poise under pressure. That has always been his special quality.
When everyone else is collapsing, Tiger creates an eye of the storm for himself and just keeps nailing shot after shot.
He is like a boxer who has been exchanging body blows round after round with his opponents, who hang in there for a while, but then wilted under the sustained pressure . . . while Tiger keeps standing until the bell rings.
Elevate Your Sales Game
Tiger Woods is controversial and I am not setting him up as a role model by any means. You can decide what to take, if anything, from his comeback efforts and this particular achievement.
But one thing we do know after many years of research and interaction with high performance salespeople is that one of the top predictors of success in sales is resilience . . . the ability to get back up when you are knocked down, the ability to bounce back when you are rejected, the will to make one more call when everyone else has gone home.
Tiger just showed us what a driving need to succeed can accomplish, overcoming all obstacles, under astonishing pressure, in a challenging sport.
There is no doubt in my mind that if Tiger was a fellow salesperson, he would drive himself to the top of that leaderboard as well.
Sales “Masters”
But sales is YOUR game, closing deals is YOUR Masters and selling at the highest level is YOUR opportunity the be the best.
So, the question is . . . do you want it as badly as Tiger wanted that green jacket?
The answer will make all the difference in your success as a salesperson.
