One of the most important aspects of learning is the willingness to look foolish. When we’re early in the process, we have to be ok with failing. That’s the quickest way to learn.

In sports, it’s pretty simple.

Pick up a basketball and shoot it. At first you’ll fail.

But as you put deliberate effort into improving, you’ll get better.

Then take your game to the court. Again, you won’t be good to start, but if you continue to play, you’ll get better. And ideally, you’ll continue to play against progressively harder competition, who force you to be better and better to compete.

We have to be willing to continuously extend our comfort zone. To push just beyond where we’re capable.

In sales, the quickest way to fine-tune our pitch is by giving it to a real person. By watching their reaction, identifying the weak points in our arguments, and fine-tuning our story so we’re better next time.

That’s how we learn, by doing.

Sometimes we fall on our face, but that’s fine. Or at least, most of the time it is.

There’s a key distinction to be aware of.

If we’re selling ice cream cones, the customer pool is essentially infinite. It doesn’t matter if we lose 1, or even 100 customers while we’re fine-tuning our pitch and our product. The learning experience is more valuable than the lost customer.

But it’s a different story when there are 10, or 2 customers who we can sell to.

When the customer pool is small, we can’t afford to swing and miss. We have to come prepared with a targeted message that we know will hit.

That’s not to say that we can’t find other targets to practice on. But we have to realize when the stakes are high.

-Brandon