"You've got a gift Roy - but it's not enough - you've got to develop yourself."

The magazine was Men's Journal. The issue was November, 1997. The contentious question hanging in the air was who would replace Michael Jordan as the NBA's iconic face? Who would follow him like he followed Bird and Magic, yet in following them went on to set a new standard of excellence that might never be replicated? Could anyone be the next Jordan?

"Jordan is the greatest team athlete this country has ever produced.  He accepts the responsibility, every night, of being that kind of star, of being Michael Jordan."

Okay, that made sense to me, but the author introduced a story I'd not heard, one that had been told to Jordan about Joe DiMaggio.

DiMaggio came to the ballpark each night thinking "there must be someone in the stands who was watching him in person for the first - and only - time. And how that motivated him to at least try to be at his best."

Jordan, like DiMaggio, and Musial and Gibson (homer footnote here) never mailed in a performance.  He was renown for his practice intensity right up to the day before he retired.   He  won everything he could win in his sport, multiple times, but never stopped bringing his intensity.

I've told this story many times to many sales training classes.  Each time I challenged them to think like Jordan or DiMaggio.

Approach each office as if there's at least one customer who is encountering them for the first and perhaps only time and represent their company and themselves the best they can.  Get up each day, look in the mirror and tell yourself, I'm going to encounter people today who will judge me on my performance and this is the only day they'll see that performance so I need to be at my best.

It's unbelievably difficult to bring that level of intensity and excellence to your personal playing field every single day.  But it's doable. Not once did I have to make a sales call with Patrick Ewing on my back or Bill Laimbeer trying to take my head off.  Michael Jordan had to work his way through human land mines every game.

I've reminded sales trainees and product managers that every spring the best baseball players in the world  go to spring training - to train and practice.


Sports are so competitive now that most athletes never stop training.  During my time as president of Abbott Canada I was invited to play in the Montreal Canadiens annual golf outing. Each three- person team was allowed to draft a Canadiens' player.  We drafted, a goalie, Jeff Hackett.  About the third hole, I asked him what he did in the off-season. He looked at me like I had twenty-five clubs in my bag and asked incredulously, "Off season?"

"Man there is no off-season.  It's so competitive out there that when this season is over, I'll be training for the next one."

Yet, many of you have trouble convincing your sales people they need to role play and practice with sales material. There is no off-season in sales or marketing or managing your business and as Satchel Paige said, "Don't look back. Someone might be gaining on you." Trust me. They are.

Each summer the best football players in the world show up for training camp.  The best hockey players in the world arrive at training camp.  The best basketball players in the world practice every week.

Yet rising above all these greatest in the world players was Michael Jordan and Joe DiMaggio and Joe Montana and Walter Payton, because they knew that each and every day they were being measured and they wanted to be the best every single time.

Roy Hobbs, the fictional ball player in The Natural, had a gift, but it wasn't enough and late in his career, he echoed the lament of every athlete whose dream didn't match up to their career.

"And then when I walked down the street, people would've looked, they would've said 'there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there was in the game.'"

It's never too late to develop your gift, to be the best you can be - in your game - every day.