Episode 7

Practicing With A Purpose - Lessons Learned From Top Gun

In this episode of Connect & Convert, hosts Dave Salter and Dennis Collins discuss the lessons small businesses can learn from Top Gun training for salespeople. Collins explains how Top Gun pilots use "deliberate practice" to rapidly improve specific flight maneuvers. This involves breaking skills into chunks, intensive repetition on weaknesses, constant feedback, and pushing past comfort zones.

The hosts outline how business owners can implement a "Top Gun training" approach with their sales teams. This includes identifying skill gaps, focused practice sessions, measurement of progress, and coaching. Examples are provided of how elite athletes use purposeful practice, such as Joe DiMaggio's baseball training rituals.

Collins emphasizes that skills require rigorous, intentional development - people are not just "natural" experts. The key is practice at the edge of your current competence. Listen now to learn how to empower your salespeople and boost performance through Top Gun-style training.

Transcript
Dave Salter:

Hi, I'm Dave Salter and you've landed on Connect & Convert, the

Dave Salter:

podcast where we share insider secrets for small business sales success.

Dave Salter:

I'm joined today, as always by Dennis Collins, our resident

Dave Salter:

sales training expert.

Dave Salter:

Dennis, good to see you this morning.

Dennis Collins:

How are you, Dave?

Dave Salter:

I'm doing really well.

Dave Salter:

Thank you for asking.

Dave Salter:

And are right.

Dave Salter:

You're

Dennis Collins:

gonna stir it up today?

Dave Salter:

I'm gonna stir you up real right off the bat.

Dennis Collins:

All right.

Dennis Collins:

Crank me up here.

Dennis Collins:

Come on, let's go.

Dave Salter:

I don't know if you're a basketball fan or at all, but

Dennis Collins:

Yeah, slightly.

Dave Salter:

It wasn't too long ago, so I, I.

Dave Salter:

Confession.

Dave Salter:

I'm a, I've been, I don't watch the NBA much anymore, but back in

Dave Salter:

the day I was a big 70 Sixers fan.

Dave Salter:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

Yeah.

Dennis Collins:

I was too.

Dave Salter:

So they had this youngster named Alan Iversson.

Dave Salter:

Wow.

Dave Salter:

And Alan Allen was infamous for not practicing very often.

Dave Salter:

There was a particular instance where he was in a press conference after a

Dave Salter:

game that they had lost, and a reporter asked him about his lack of practice and

Dave Salter:

it's a fa like you could Google it now.

Dave Salter:

He said, "practice?

Dave Salter:

We're talking about practice?"

Dave Salter:

and he.

Dave Salter:

O on this reporter about, his feeling that practice was not very significant to him.

Dave Salter:

Whereas as a coach, I would argue that practice is.

Dave Salter:

Pretty important not only for the individual, but also for the team.

Dave Salter:

And also, practicing with a purpose.

Dave Salter:

And so today we're gonna talk a little bit about practice and you've

Dave Salter:

also got some lessons you've learned from Top Gun that relate Yeah.

Dave Salter:

To practice, haven't you?

Dennis Collins:

Did you see those movies, Top Gun movies?

Dave Salter:

Both of them.

Dennis Collins:

What do you think of those movies?

Dennis Collins:

Aren't they something?

Dave Salter:

I'll tell you what the original, when the original's

Dave Salter:

on regular tv, I always watch it.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dave Salter:

Always.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dennis Collins:

It's I've seen both of them multiple times.

Dennis Collins:

I don't know what it is, the fascination, maybe it's my secret

Dennis Collins:

desire to be a navy naval fighter pilot.

Dennis Collins:

I don't know.

Dennis Collins:

But never made it to the Navy fighter pilot school.

Dennis Collins:

But anyway.

Dennis Collins:

Let's, how does this relate to business?

Dennis Collins:

We're supposed to be talking about business, right?

Dennis Collins:

Here's some news.

Dennis Collins:

If I were to visit your business today, and I did an observation of how your

Dennis Collins:

team is practicing, if they've prac, if they practice at all, how they are

Dennis Collins:

practicing what they learned, I will bet you a lot of money that they're either

Dennis Collins:

not practicing or practicing incorrectly.

Dennis Collins:

Incorrect practice is almost as bad as no practice at all.

Dennis Collins:

What is practice?

Dennis Collins:

I don't know.

Dennis Collins:

What were you told Dave?

Dennis Collins:

I was told repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

Dennis Collins:

Just do it over and over.

Dennis Collins:

What does it make a difference?

Dennis Collins:

How and how often and what you practice?

Dave Salter:

Probably does.

Dave Salter:

I, I coach basketball, so I'm always telling my girls,

Dave Salter:

basketball's a game of repetition.

Dave Salter:

It from a skill standpoint, but.

Dave Salter:

I just actually went through postseason meetings with my players

Dave Salter:

to give them specific practice instructions for the off season,

Dave Salter:

because every player has a different responsibility and or a different

Dave Salter:

skillset that they need to practice.

Dennis Collins:

Then you're already pretty much ahead of the curve

Dennis Collins:

of most small business owners.

Dennis Collins:

Here's the deal.

Dennis Collins:

If you're training, if you're doing training either personally

Dennis Collins:

or professionally, and you're not seeing any improvement,

Dennis Collins:

you are training the wrong way.

Dennis Collins:

And I will ask our small business owner listeners, who, how many training

Dennis Collins:

dollars are being wasted because the training is never installed.

Dennis Collins:

You either forget it very quickly, as we've talked about in other podcasts,

Dennis Collins:

or it just never gets installed.

Dennis Collins:

It never gets internalized.

Dennis Collins:

Billions of dollars, Dave.

Dennis Collins:

60 billion wasted per year.

Dave Salter:

So Dennis, I want you to do a quick breakdown cuz you've done

Dave Salter:

you, you've explained this to me.

Dave Salter:

Those dollars get lost.

Dave Salter:

So there's a lack of a sale.

Dave Salter:

There's there, there's a couple different places where that money

Dave Salter:

get that training money gets lost.

Dennis Collins:

It's too, it's a double barrelled problem.

Dennis Collins:

Number one.

Dennis Collins:

According to the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, as you may have

Dennis Collins:

heard in previous podcasts, you're gonna forget what you learned today

Dennis Collins:

in 24 hours and 90% in one week.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

How much does that cost you in training?

Dennis Collins:

I would suggest if you spend a hundred thousand dollars a year in training, that

Dennis Collins:

$90,000 of that is probably wasted on unless, unless you do some interventions.

Dennis Collins:

That's what we wanna talk about today.

Dave Salter:

So tell me a little bit more about this Top Gun style of training.

Dave Salter:

You and I, neither you and I are both beyond the age of being able

Dave Salter:

to be a naval aviator, but we can certainly apply this to sales training.

Dennis Collins:

We can, The movie certainly dramatize

Dennis Collins:

what goes on in Top Gun, but.

Dennis Collins:

Yeah, the movie's cool and great to watch, but I'm not talking about the movie here.

Dennis Collins:

I'm talking about what actually goes on in Top Gun training.

Dennis Collins:

As it's a real thing.

Dennis Collins:

It's not some fictional thing that the movie's made up, and here's

Dennis Collins:

some of the myths and the problem training and thinking about training.

Dennis Collins:

One of the things I was told, you just need to try harder, son.

Dennis Collins:

To get better.

Dennis Collins:

You just need to put more effort in.

Dennis Collins:

Ever heard that?

Dave Salter:

Absolutely.

Dennis Collins:

And here's another one.

Dennis Collins:

If you do something long enough, you're just gonna get better.

Dennis Collins:

Yeah.

Dennis Collins:

I wish that were true.

Dennis Collins:

We spend too much time, Dave rehearsing and practicing stuff that

Dennis Collins:

we already know and not enough time on things we need to know, but don't.

Dennis Collins:

I'll give you a personal example, tennis.

Dennis Collins:

I love to play when I have various coaches over the years and guess what?

Dennis Collins:

I preferred to hit the forehand cuz I hid it well.

Dave Salter:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

I wanted to hit my forehand.

Dennis Collins:

My back hand sucked.

Dennis Collins:

Okay?

Dennis Collins:

But cause it was painful, I didn't do it well.

Dennis Collins:

How many of us in sales training do the thing that's easy for us, the

Dennis Collins:

forehand and skip the stuff that's hard.

Dave Salter:

All of us.

Dave Salter:

That's human nature, right?

Dennis Collins:

Seems to me.

Dennis Collins:

How about, here's another one.

Dennis Collins:

Stay in your job long enough and you'll become an expert.

Dennis Collins:

I met a lot of people who had 30 years of experience one year at a

Dennis Collins:

time, if sales training, Dave, and I was a consumer of sales training for

Dennis Collins:

many years it's focused on knowledge.

Dennis Collins:

Okay, that's cool.

Dennis Collins:

You gotta have the knowledge, but what is it that you're

Dennis Collins:

trying to train salespeople for?

Dennis Collins:

For skills.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

And then there's the old 10 hour myth.

Dennis Collins:

I don't know who created that.

Dennis Collins:

Somebody wrote that in a book somewhere.

Dennis Collins:

If you do something for 10,000 hours, you're an expert.

Dennis Collins:

I'll agree with part of that.

Dennis Collins:

Becoming an expert requires time.

Dennis Collins:

It require, requires time to do it, but I don't agree with the rest of it.

Dennis Collins:

It's what you do with that time.

Dennis Collins:

It's how you spend the time that makes the difference.

Dennis Collins:

I'm talking about here, deliberate practice.

Dennis Collins:

That's the kind of practice Top Gun uses.

Dennis Collins:

They practice with a purpose.

Dennis Collins:

It's all about doing work, but it's all about getting out there and flying

Dennis Collins:

the plane, making mistakes, making mistakes, getting instant feedback.

Dennis Collins:

Making corrections and perfecting a specific skill.

Dave Salter:

There's more to that story though, because in the movie and in

Dave Salter:

real life actually, Top Gun aviators are all already the best of the best, so

Dennis Collins:

that's how they got chosen.

Dave Salter:

So the Top Gun School takes the best and makes them even better.

Dave Salter:

Makes them...

Dennis Collins:

Well said, Dave.

Dennis Collins:

It was it was founded as the United States Navy Fighter Weapon School.

Dennis Collins:

That was the official title.

Dennis Collins:

But it became, nicknamed the Top Gun.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

Here's why they did it.

Dennis Collins:

The Naval Aviator aviators were losing too many dog.

Dennis Collins:

Or in the mid sixties, right?

Dennis Collins:

They were doing pretty well about a five to one kill ratio.

Dennis Collins:

Five of theirs for every one of ours, which is not great, but not bad.

Dennis Collins:

But in 1968, all of a sudden it went down two to one.

Dennis Collins:

We were losing one of our planes for every two that we shot down.

Dennis Collins:

A guy named Captain Frank Alt, a Navy captain was said, fix this captain.

Dennis Collins:

That is how Top Gun got born.

Dennis Collins:

What's the concept?

Dennis Collins:

Train people who are already trained and you said it Dave, they're

Dennis Collins:

already trained on the job, but they were not properly trained.

Dennis Collins:

What happened was that the naval pilots were trained to use missiles

Dennis Collins:

and technology, and in the Vietnam War those were ineffective.

Dave Salter:

Correct.

Dennis Collins:

They forgot how to dog fight.

Dennis Collins:

They forgot how to go head to head with a Russian mig and win that battle.

Dave Salter:

Right.

Dennis Collins:

So Top Gun School was created to give

Dennis Collins:

them very quickly that skill.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dave Salter:

That was not and if I remember the movie correctly, it was only, it's

Dave Salter:

only like a five week training program.

Dennis Collins:

It's not a yeah's very, it's very brief.

Dennis Collins:

Yeah.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dave Salter:

It's not a, it's not like going to college for four years.

Dave Salter:

It's a quick, a very specific set of skills they want to teach you,

Dave Salter:

and a very short amount of time.

Dennis Collins:

It's basically based on continuously pushing

Dennis Collins:

yourself your current ability.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

If you some of the videos from that, even though it's a movie, but wow,

Dennis Collins:

these guys were told and taught to do things they didn't think they

Dennis Collins:

could do to an airplane, right?

Dennis Collins:

And they didn't think they could do to themselves.

Dennis Collins:

They pushed themselves past their own ability.

Dennis Collins:

Push yourself.

Dennis Collins:

Landing on your butt a hundred, maybe a thousand times.

Dennis Collins:

They had a red team and a blue team.

Dennis Collins:

The red team were the trainers.

Dennis Collins:

These guys were even better pilots than Top Gun pilots.

Dennis Collins:

The blue team were the Top Gun pilots.

Dennis Collins:

For the first two weeks, the blue team lost.

Dennis Collins:

Dog fight, the red team outfoxed them, the trainers outfoxed them in every dog fight.

Dennis Collins:

That's humiliating to some of the guys who think they're

Dennis Collins:

the best pilots in the world.

Dennis Collins:

That's where it started.

Dennis Collins:

They made mistakes.

Dennis Collins:

It includes elements, as as tactics against realistic training scenarios.

Dennis Collins:

They actually used some real Russian MIGS in Top Gun training.

Dennis Collins:

So they made it as realistic as they possibly could.

Dennis Collins:

So the,

Dennis Collins:

one of the things that you didn't gloss over, but it, so this requires

Dennis Collins:

a mentor mentee approach, right?

Dennis Collins:

So you've got this really elite world class aviator who's.

Dennis Collins:

Now the coach, if you will, to this up and coming guy that's, he's got lots

Dennis Collins:

of skills and ability, but isn't at the level that they want him to be at.

Dennis Collins:

So talk a little bit about that, that mentor relationship, okay.

Dennis Collins:

And getting that, that all-star to be a superstar.

Dennis Collins:

There's a couple elements in Top Gun that I think we can take a

Dennis Collins:

lesson from in business number one.

Dennis Collins:

It's designed to improve a specific performance.

Dennis Collins:

So they outlined exactly what they wanted these pilots to do, and

Dennis Collins:

it's designed to make improvements.

Dennis Collins:

So they take the baseline and then they measure improvement.

Dennis Collins:

Secondly, it requires a mentor, a coach, a okay, outside eyes, unbiased.

Dennis Collins:

We just can't evaluate ourselves very objectively.

Dennis Collins:

It needs another perspective.

Dennis Collins:

And a lot of people say, I don't need a coach.

Dennis Collins:

Newsflash for you, the world's best in anything in athletics,

Dennis Collins:

in fighting in, the Navy.

Dennis Collins:

All of them have coaches.

Dennis Collins:

The world's best have coaches.

Dennis Collins:

Push yourself to practice the thing that you can't quite do.

Dennis Collins:

That hurts.

Dennis Collins:

That's why we don't do it.

Dennis Collins:

That's why so few people do it.

Dennis Collins:

Sure.

Dennis Collins:

We don't practice at the edge of our competence.

Dennis Collins:

We usually practice what we've done over and over again.

Dennis Collins:

Tiger Woods, it's reported.

Dennis Collins:

There's so many stories about Tiger Woods.

Dennis Collins:

I could do a whole podcast on Tiger Woods, but one of the stories I like

Dennis Collins:

is he would take a golf ball, okay.

Dennis Collins:

And he'd go into a sand trap, he'd put it down in the sand and he'd step on it.

Dennis Collins:

He'd push it down into the sand and then he would try to hit it.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

Maybe he'd hit it a hundred times, 200 times.

Dennis Collins:

How many times in reality did he ever have a shot?

Dennis Collins:

Just like that?

Dennis Collins:

Probably one or two times in his whole career.

Dennis Collins:

Yeah.

Dennis Collins:

Yeah.

Dennis Collins:

He practiced that to the point of he was totally competent at doing

Dennis Collins:

it.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dave Salter:

You'd have to do, you'd have to do the Tiger Woods thing on your own.

Dave Salter:

I'm a Phil Mickelson guy, but that's okay.

Dave Salter:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

There, there's a guy mentioned in Colvin's book.

Dennis Collins:

Talent is Overrated.

Dennis Collins:

Great book, by the way.

Dennis Collins:

Jeff Colvin.

Dennis Collins:

The guy's name is Professor Noel Titchy, t I c H Y.

Dennis Collins:

He came up with an idea of three concentric circles.

Dennis Collins:

Okay?

Dennis Collins:

The inner circle is your comfort zone.

Dennis Collins:

The middle circle is your learning zone, and the outer

Dennis Collins:

circle is your panic zone, okay?

Dennis Collins:

And he says you must get into the LZ or the learning zone to get any kind of

Dennis Collins:

learning that will stick high repetition.

Dennis Collins:

In the learning zone, the panic zone.

Dennis Collins:

Obviously no learning.

Dennis Collins:

The comfort zone you don't even wanna learn.

Dennis Collins:

Constant feedback.

Dennis Collins:

That's what Top Gun people get.

Dennis Collins:

They got on the planes, they had videos of everything, and they

Dennis Collins:

had radar tracks and everything.

Dennis Collins:

They'd come back to the classroom and say, okay, Maverick, how did you do?

Dennis Collins:

Well, sir, I, oh, okay.

Dennis Collins:

Is that your assessment?

Dennis Collins:

Or you're wrong?

Dennis Collins:

Let me show you the video of where you screwed up.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

And let me show you the radar track of what you did as opposed

Dennis Collins:

to what you should have done.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

How do we know that Top Gun training works well?

Dennis Collins:

Metrics, the kill ratios before and after they went from 2.1.

Dennis Collins:

And when these pilots went back into battle in Vietnam, 12 point 12 to one,

Dennis Collins:

two, to one, improved to 12 to one.

Dave Salter:

You talked a little bit about this, but talk if you could

Dave Salter:

reference the talent code a little bit because there's there's a disparity

Dave Salter:

obviously in skills and talent bet, with salespeople as well as naval aviators.

Dave Salter:

And there, so obviously we need to overcome that challenge before you

Dave Salter:

can start elevating your performance.

Dennis Collins:

The talent code speaks to the chemistry of how we learn something.

Dennis Collins:

There is a coating called myelin, which coats our nerves endings

Dennis Collins:

and connection to the brain.

Dennis Collins:

According to Daniel Coyle, that myelin is what makes us remember.

Dennis Collins:

And re-fire those nerves when needed very quickly.

Dennis Collins:

The more myelin you have surrounding that particular nerve, the quicker it fires

Dennis Collins:

and the better it remembers how to fire.

Dennis Collins:

So every time you do deep practice where you practice at the edge of your

Dennis Collins:

competence, you look for your mistakes, you correct the mistakes, and you

Dennis Collins:

practice that builds myelin very quickly.

Dennis Collins:

And so Coyle's point is that's one of the ways that deep practice works.

Dave Salter:

Dennis, let's bring this back.

Dave Salter:

Now, if you're a small business owner, how does this, compare

Dave Salter:

to traditional sales training?

Dave Salter:

How can the Top Gun concept be applied to sales training for a small business owner?

Dennis Collins:

It won't be as fun as applying a a Navy jet at

Dennis Collins:

supersonic speeds, but what's going on in your business?

Dennis Collins:

Do you have any practice sessions?

Dennis Collins:

If so, what do they look like?

Dennis Collins:

The Top Gun concept can be applied in this way.

Dennis Collins:

The first lesson of Top Gun, the first lesson of deliberate practice is chunking.

Dennis Collins:

Chunking.

Dennis Collins:

Don't try to learn the whole thing at one time.

Dennis Collins:

They chunked their skills.

Dennis Collins:

Today we're gonna work on X.

Dennis Collins:

So the first recommendation I have is, let's look at a sales process.

Dennis Collins:

How many chunks are there?

Dennis Collins:

Hey, there's the opening of the sale, there's rapport building,

Dennis Collins:

there's a sales call agenda.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

There's needs identification, there's handling objections and questions.

Dennis Collins:

There's options review, there's closing there's buying signals, recognizing

Dennis Collins:

and responding to buying signals.

Dennis Collins:

I could go on.

Dennis Collins:

I just named on about 10 chunks.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dennis Collins:

Yet some of us practice those as if they were one chunk.

Dennis Collins:

My suggestion to small business owners is take one of those.

Dennis Collins:

Take opening the sale and break that down into a further chunk and say, today

Dennis Collins:

we're gonna practice opening the sale.

Dennis Collins:

Opening the sale.

Dennis Collins:

Yes.

Dennis Collins:

That is the chunk we're gonna practice until we are perfect at opening the sale.

Dave Salter:

So you're, you're scaring me a little bit cuz you're

Dave Salter:

talking about chunks and we also talked about golf, so I'm reminded

Dave Salter:

of my golf game when you're talking about chunking and golf, but anyway,

Dennis Collins:

well, golf is a fun, I can't play golf.

Dennis Collins:

I admire you if you can.

Dennis Collins:

It is the most.

Dennis Collins:

Exercise for me that you can possibly imagine.

Dennis Collins:

But I did overhear a story once on the golf course.

Dennis Collins:

This coach was working with this this guy, and he says, Hey the

Dennis Collins:

coach said, what are you doing?

Dennis Collins:

He said, Hey, coach, it's not practice with a purpose.

Dave Salter:

Yeah.

Dennis Collins:

Practice with a purpose is, like we've said, chunk

Dennis Collins:

it down, set a specific goal for improvement, make mistakes, get

Dennis Collins:

feedback, and make a correction.

Dave Salter:

You've got another great example from an all time

Dave Salter:

Hall of Fame baseball player.

Dave Salter:

Tell me about that.

Dennis Collins:

You must be talking about the one and only Joe DiMaggio.

Dave Salter:

Yep.

Dennis Collins:

The Yankee Clipper.

Dennis Collins:

Played 13 seasons for one team.

Dennis Collins:

Had a 3 25 lifetime batting average.

Dennis Collins:

At one time, he had a 56 game hitting streak, 56 games.

Dennis Collins:

That's unheard of.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

One of the best hitters in the game.

Dennis Collins:

He had two things that he did for batting practice.

Dennis Collins:

He a journalist came over to his house one day to write an article about

Dennis Collins:

him, and he was interviewing him and he says, tell me Joe, how does it

Dennis Collins:

feel to be a natural born hitter?

Dennis Collins:

And Joe sat back and he says, don't ever say that to me.

Dennis Collins:

Come with me.

Dennis Collins:

He took him down in his basement and down in his basement, he had a

Dennis Collins:

baseball bat, no balls, and he was just swinging shadow, swinging this bat.

Dennis Collins:

But he did something.

Dennis Collins:

He called out a pitch.

Dennis Collins:

He said, okay, that's low and inside that's a fastball up, that's a slider out.

Dennis Collins:

He would call the pitch and he'd swing as if he were hitting that pitch.

Dennis Collins:

And then the guy turned on the lights and Joe turned on the lights.

Dennis Collins:

And in his basement there were thousands of marks of tick marks about how

Dennis Collins:

many times he had actually done that.

Dennis Collins:

He said, wow.

Dennis Collins:

Don't ever say ever again that I'm a natural born hitter.

Dennis Collins:

Wow, that's not true.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

And we could go on and on.

Dennis Collins:

There are thousands of stories like this.

Dennis Collins:

Deliberate practice works.

Dennis Collins:

It works.

Dave Salter:

DiMaggio also had a secret for his outfield play as well though.

Dennis Collins:

He did he did things that other players didn't do.

Dennis Collins:

Okay.

Dennis Collins:

He had, he was a center fielder.

Dennis Collins:

He was, had exceptional skills as rigorous practice.

Dennis Collins:

Before each game he would go out there and practice fielding balls in the

Dennis Collins:

outfield, but he paid close attention to the way the ball moved on the grass,

Dennis Collins:

the way it bounced on the ground.

Dennis Collins:

He practiced with intention, he practiced with purpose.

Dennis Collins:

Okay?

Dennis Collins:

He didn't just go through the motions.

Dennis Collins:

I'm sad to say that it took me many years of life before I ever realized this.

Dennis Collins:

I wish I had known this sooner, right?

Dennis Collins:

You got to practice with intention practice at your edge, not at

Dennis Collins:

what you're really good at.

Dave Salter:

And that's the, and that's really the Top Gun training concept that

Dave Salter:

we've talked about today is practicing with a purpose trying to practice

Dave Salter:

on your weaknesses to improve those weaknesses so that you can be elite.

Dave Salter:

And this, Dennis, you, I'm sure you would agree this applies

Dave Salter:

to any part of your life.

Dennis Collins:

Any part in your life.

Dennis Collins:

You can apply Top Gun type training to anything you want to do.

Dennis Collins:

A lot of times it's applied to music.

Dennis Collins:

And sports.

Dennis Collins:

Those are the two that are the most, and there's millions of examples of musicians

Dennis Collins:

who learned how to play difficult pieces in a very short period of time.

Dennis Collins:

Because they use deliberate practice.

Dennis Collins:

They practice each part, each chunk, until they got it just right,

Dennis Collins:

and then they moved then and only then they move on to the next one.

Dave Salter:

Awesome.

Dave Salter:

Really good stuff today, Dennis.

Dave Salter:

Thanks for your wisdom and insight today, folks.

Dave Salter:

That wraps up another edition of Connect & Convert, the podcast that lets you

Dave Salter:

behind the curtain with some insider secrets for small business sales success.

Dave Salter:

This is Dave Salter and Dennis Collins.

Dave Salter:

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for Connect & Convert: The Sales Accelerator Podcast
Connect & Convert: The Sales Accelerator Podcast
Insider Strategies for Small Business Sales Success

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About your hosts

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Dennis Collins

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Paul Boomer

I help businesses grow up after they've grown their revenue. Think about that for a moment. You'll understand what I mean.