Pressure Is A Privilege

A bonus blog having just watched the women’s tennis slam final in London. It turns out the title of this post was both a text sent by former champ Billie Jean King (to Maria Sharapova before she won the 2008 Open in Melbourne) and a book she co-wrote.

As I do like to muse on what selling can learn from sport, and the web being what it is, I quickly find that three elements apparently make up the full story:

Champions take chances. Pressure is a privilege – it only comes to those who earn it.

You can find more all over the net (including interviews on youtube), but my quick point is that you can often tell the sales stars apart because they love being in the middle of the storm.

Whether it be at the heart of the whale of a deal or tense period-end moments, they don’t tend to panic and fluster. Instead, they relish where they are, take one step at a time and celebrate only once the finishing line is crossed.

footnote (i): When catching the following day’s Men’s final, commentators Becker & Henman also liked to liberally drop motivational psycho-slogans. Their two best were:

winning breeds winning, &

practice makes permanent (as opposed to perfect)