By Floyd Rembert, Marietta, GA
Why I still think like a sprinter
Before I ever sat across a table from a customer, I was standing in the blocks waiting for a gun to go off. I ran the 200 and 400 meters in high school, and I set state records doing it. That kind of competition teaches you things no sales training ever will. It teaches you what preparation actually costs, and what happens when you skip it.
People ask me sometimes why I approach a sales cycle the way I do, so methodically, so far in advance. The answer is simple. I learned it on a track long before I learned it in an office.
The race is won before the race starts
Nobody sets a record by showing up and hoping. You win a 400 meter race in the weeks before it happens, through the workouts nobody sees and the mornings you didn’t want to get up. By the time the gun goes off, the outcome is mostly decided.
I run my business the same way. I start my day at 5:00 a.m., because the account executives who wait until the workday starts to get their heads right are already behind. I plan meetings with customers weeks in advance rather than scrambling for a slot on the calendar. None of that is about being busy. It’s about making sure that when the moment to perform arrives, I’ve already done the work that makes performing possible.
A lot of people in sales treat preparation as a checkbox. Read the account brief, glance at the notes, walk in. That’s not preparation, that’s improvisation with a folder. Real preparation means you know the account so well that nothing your customer says catches you off guard.
Pacing yourself through a long deal
The 400 is a strange event. It’s too long to sprint the whole way and too short to coast. You have to know exactly how much to hold back at the start and exactly when to spend everything you have left. Misjudge it and you either fade in the final stretch or finish with something left in the tank you should have used.
Long government sales cycles work the same way. If you push too hard too early, you burn out the relationship before it’s ready to close. If you hold back too long, you lose the moment when the customer is ready to move. Learning to read that pace, when to push and when to hold, is not something I picked up from a sales manual. It came from learning how to run a race that punishes both impatience and hesitation.
Losing teaches more than winning
Track is unforgiving. There’s a clock, and it doesn’t care about your excuses. You either ran fast enough or you didn’t. I think that kind of honesty is missing from a lot of business thinking. People want to explain away a lost deal instead of just admitting the prospecting was thin or the follow-up was late.
The habit I carry from athletics is treating results as information, not as something to defend. If a quarter goes poorly, I don’t look for a story that makes it feel okay. I look at what I did or didn’t do in the weeks before, the same way a coach reviews film.
What coaching kids has taught me back
Since 2011 I’ve coached youth baseball, and it has sharpened this way of thinking rather than replaced it. Watching a nine-year-old learn to trust their preparation instead of panicking at the plate is a small thing, but it’s the same lesson in miniature. Confidence isn’t a personality trait. It’s what preparation feels like once you trust it.
I tell the kids I coach that nerves don’t go away, you just get better at performing through them. That’s true walking up to bat, and it’s true walking into a room with a customer who has a dozen reasons to say no.
The takeaway for anyone starting out
If you’re early in a sales career, or in any work that rewards discipline over talent, don’t wait for motivation to build your routine. Build the routine, and let it produce the discipline. That’s what track taught me before I understood it was a lesson at all. You don’t feel ready most mornings. You get up anyway, and readiness follows.