In his best-selling book, “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell made famous the thesis that 10,000 hours of practice were required to achieve greatness at a task.
I read “Outliers” with great interest many years ago. Gladwell serendipitously discovered that the majority of professional hockey players were consistently born early in the calendar year. As a result, he made the conclusive leap that children born earlier in the scholastic year had a physical advantage that was magnified at a young age. Consequently, the slightly older children got more playing time and therefore had more opportunity to hone their skills and thus became the elite players in the NHL.
Q.E.D. (Quod erat demonstrantum) … thus it is proven. Or is it? Since the writing of that book, there have been various attempts to debunk Gladwell. One notable criticism, albeit subtle, came from Jim Collins in the appendix of his book, “Great by Choice.” Another came more blatantly from Anders Ericsson based on the research he conducted to produce his brilliant book on achieving performance excellence, “Peak.”
So, why is a sales columnist bringing up the controversy over 10,000 hours? What has a debunked theory got to do with the sales profession? My answer: Everything!
A salesperson can take one year of experience and repeat it 30 times throughout a 30-year career, or the salesperson can experience 30 years of growth. Ericsson proved through clinical research defined in “Peak” that achieving expert levels of experience requires more than repetition. In fact, the repetition must evolve and become purposeful. His research includes professional musicians, Olympic athletes, and other top performers, and, in fact, he concluded that thousands of hours of purposeful practice are necessary to achieve expertise.
Ericsson proved that random rehearsal produces random results. In fact, my own research as a hack golfer has proven that random rehearsal for 10,000 hours is certainly no guarantee to create expert performance. I’ve been flailing away at a golf ball for decades with at least 25,000 hours of practice and I’m still pretty mediocre.
As an example of building performance, consider the Olympian who isolates those skills of arm strokes, kicking, breathing, and turns in the pool. Only when each skill is mastered to the very highest level of expertise will the performer make the Olympics. A virtuoso pianist similarly must master arpeggios, pedaling, rhythm, and all the corresponding skills of technique before becoming concert ready.
It’s been my experience that many salespeople escape the learning curve of virtuoso sales performance for a variety of reasons. Take the skill of prospecting and recognize that many veterans inherit accounts over the span of a career and never really master the art of cold calling. Consider also that the pool of selection in music, athletics, acting, and other performance arts eliminates 99.9% of would-be participants. There are millions of salespeople, and the selection is hardly competitive. All that being noted …
It’s been my claim for decades that lots of salespeople succeed by accident. This is no criticism of them, but merely a call to action. A professional golfer must master every aspect of the game including the short game, putting, course management, the long game, and even hone mental discipline in the face of adversity. In the same way, truly elite salespeople, those who can build a book of business from scratch, master every aspect of the profession including prospecting for new customers from scratch; listening like a consultative leader; presenting prescriptively; managing the experience with internal customers; and so on.
Accidental success is a wonderful thing if it can earn you a career of bestowed high income. However, if you want to achieve dramatic success on purpose you must master, just like a pro golfer, all the skills in your bag of tricks.
