The thrill of victory—the agony of defeat—and what we learn about sales professionalism when the clock runs out.
June 21, 2023
By Adam Rosa
The Denver Nuggets against the Miami Heat: for those who don’t know, it was the NBA Finals, it was heartbreak, and it was last week. I was rooting for the Heat and the loss had me considering whether to back up my bags and wander off into solitude for a year or seven.
I’m not a big Heat fan, but I am a huge fan of Jimmy Butler, the Heat’s best player. My disappointment wasn’t about the loss; it was about the future. Jimmy has been my favorite player since his Chicago days. He is often talked about as a very, very good basketball player, yet not a great one.
I worried that this was his one chance to solidify greatness. In sales terms, it was his chance to get that sale that changes your life, the one that means you can go live in the countryside of Argentina and never have to work again. For most of us, if we lose that sale, we may not know how to move on. This week, we look at how to prepare (and how not to prepare) for a big sale, and what happens if it doesn’t go your way.
Jimmy is the best player on a mediocre team, and many analysts say he needs a championship to secure his legacy. Without it, he isn’t an all-time great, just good. All this pressure, and yet when I watched him during the pregame, he looked…calm.
His team was in the NBA Finals and there he was, laughing and doing form shooting and layup lines. These are the basketball basics—the things you learn as a four-year-old before you eventually shoot from far distances and score exciting shots. Yet there was Jimmy, my favorite player in the world, practicing basics before the biggest game of his career. He wasn’t shooting from half court, or trying backwards shots, or practicing fancy dunks. He was just honing the basics.
Before big sales calls, it’s easy for the pressure to get into our heads. When an opportunity is grand and large, we think we must make grand and large gestures and practice grand and large acts in order to succeed. This reminds me, unfortunately, of my friend Uduak’s experience.
When he was twenty-five, Uduak got the sale opportunity of a lifetime. In his early days, he would occasionally look up the phone numbers to CEOs at extremely large chemical companies to try and get them on the line. One day, a CEO actually picked up. Uduak was calm, mentioned a few things he knew about the company and how he felt his product could help, emphasizing that his product was saving companies 17% on safety costs. The CEO said he had a cancellation next week that opened a fifteen-minute window, and he was interested to hear more.
This sale would have been for the biggest client in Uduak’s entire sales organization, worth as much as all the sales Uduak had made the previous year. Like Jimmy and the Heat’s potential championship, it could solidify his legacy. Unlike Jimmy, Uduak found himself there by luck. He spent the whole week before the call hiring graphic designers to create a deck worthy of the sale he was hoping to make. He spent the week focused on extras, the bells and whistles, to impress the CEO.
As often happens, the final game of the NBA Finals came down to the final moments of the last quarter. Jimmy had made the last two baskets, both three-pointers, to keep the Heat close to winning. His form shooting was paying off, and he was on the way to a historic performance.
His team was still down three points, though, and he needed more. He got the ball, shot, missed—and was fouled. Just like that: three successful free throws would tie the game. No fancy shooting allowed, just the basics. He hit one…two…and three!
He tied the game, went on to score again, and again. (If you don’t know basketball, ten points in three minutes, in the fourth quarter of the Finals, is an insane stat line.) Then tragedy struck. Down three again, his team needed him in the final seconds. He took a difficult shot, missed, and his team lost. The Heat loses the Finals. No championship for Jimmy.
My friend Uduak was in his sales pitch, given fifteen minutes in front of the CEO. With five minutes left, he finishes his amazing sales deck with the wonderful graphics and animations that had cost more than a sales deck should. He was excited to see the CEO’s face.
The CEO said, “That’s it?”
Uduak had five minutes left and no idea how to respond. He asked what else the CEO wanted, to which the CEO said, “I would have liked to know how you were going to help me more than people we already use, not just that you like fancy animations.” Then the CEO hung up on their video call.
The buzzer had sounded on the fourth quarter. Uduak had done none of his usual steps in preparation, no sales best practices. He didn’t focus on the client’s needs or ready himself for objections. He had forgotten his process, only focused on the big shots, and he had lost.
Uduak told me that he was in tears after the call. He thought it was the call of a lifetime; he would never get one like it again, and he had ruined it. This would be a career-defining failure.
Do these two losses amount to the same thing? In the end, Jimmy messed up two plays. What everyone will remember is that the Heat didn’t win the 2023 NBA Finals. Uduak did what he thought he should, messed up his final play, and the CEO hung up.
Don’t worry, Uduak is now a thriving sales professional. But initially, he had not reflected on the moment, and this is why he took it so hard. He couldn’t recognize a learning opportunity. At Maestro, we prefer to view things like Jimmy.
“We are going to be back.”
That was what Jimmy said after the game. Not cocky. Not fake, or something just to make himself feel better. The declaration was genuine and clear in its intent.
The funny thing is, he said the same thing last year. Last year, the Heat lost in the Conference Finals to the Boston Celtics (the Conference Finals are the precursor to the championship Finals). Many people thought they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. After the loss, he said, “Don’t worry about us, we will be right back here, and next time we will get it done.”
Guess what? In this year’s Conference Finals they played the Celtics, again, and won. That’s how they got to the place of almost (though not quite) winning an NBA championship.
The Heat were the underdogs. People counted them out before the season began; they had some of the longest odds. Like my friend Uduak, they were not exactly supposed to be there.
The Heat had two “win-or-go-home” games in the playoffs. In the days before each the whole team, Jimmy included, made it seem like just another day. They laughed more than the other teams in warmups. In interviews, they said that they didn’t care about the odds and they didn’t feel the pressure. That’s where they thrived, and Uduak struggled.
Imagine what you think may be the biggest sale of your life and, instead of sweating buckets, you walk in knowing you should be there. No matter the outcome, you know you are successful. If you do that, you probably are more likely to get the sale.
And the biggest thing? You treat it like any other sale. You do the basics. Uduak did not do the basics. He didn’t research the client or discover their pain points. There was no mitigating of risk, only creating it. He focused on himself, not the client, and forgot his layup lines and form shooting. You don’t suddenly change how you play or how you sell because you feel the pressure. You need to know you belong.
The best sales professionals create their opportunities. With good basics, you create a process, and repeatable processes create repeatable opportunities. If a big opportunity comes along and is missed, that doesn’t close the door to succeeding later—perhaps it even opens the door to a bigger opportunity. You’re not ready for success until you’re comfortable with failure. Uduak has learned this now, but he did not know it at age twenty-five.
Sales professionals can learn from Jimmy Butler. If you invest in the process, the outcome will eventually go your way and you’ll get where you belong. Any missed opportunity is a chance to learn and get there again. No need to cry about it; just get back to work.
Ready to up your sales game? Contact us to learn more about Maestro’s trainings at mastery@maestrogroup.co.
Get the Maestro Mastery Blog, straight to your inbox.
