Three Sports Rules That Can Transform Your Sales Performance

Direct answer: The same three rules I teach my kids in sports work in sales. Give your best effort. Be a great teammate. Have fun competing. None of them are complicated. All three separate the reps who last from the ones who don't.

Before every season, I tell my boys the same three rules. Give your best effort. Be a great teammate. Have fun competing. I didn't write those rules for a sales team. But I've watched them hold up in one just as well as they hold up on a field or a rink.

Effort Is Not Optional

If you're not giving your best, it's hard to justify the work at all. That's true in youth hockey and it's true in a sales career. Consistent effort is the foundation everything else gets built on. Talent gets you in the room. Effort is what keeps you in it, deal after deal, season after season.

Great Teams Win Together

My boys hear this one before every game: we win as a team. That means backing up the person next to you, doing the part of the job nobody notices, and making the people around you better. In sales, that's being the rep who preps the account exec before the call, who shares the play that actually worked, who shows up for the team even after they've already hit their number. Dependable beats talented, every team I've watched actually win.

Compete, and Enjoy the Competition

Sports are competitive. That's what makes them fun. Sales is the same. Solving a hard problem for a buyer, working a deal that shouldn't close, hitting a number nobody thought was possible: that's the fun part. If you're only in this job for the paycheck, you're missing the part that makes it worth doing.

Preparation Is Part of the Deal

None of this works without the fourth thing I don't say out loud because it shouldn't need saying: show up early, practice, do the work. Preparation isn't an optional extra. It's what being a great teammate actually looks like when nobody's watching.

Kids learn effort, teamwork, and competition through sports. Adults relearn them through sales, if they're paying attention. Question everything.