Martina Navratilova’s court record is one of the best you’ll read about in all sports. Like all great athletes – and sellers too – Martina learned how to add to God-given talents and get to the top.

It’s true: consistent winning isn’t easy and certainly not common. Most mortals adjust to the mean at a certain stage in their careers. But consistent high performance can be attained if the effort and dedication stay true.

Only after Martina joined forces with basketball dynamo Nancy Lieberman did she find that extra gear (or three) – that’s when she began dominating her opponents. At Lieberman’s urgings, Navratilova took up weight training to achieve peak conditioning, running, and basketball to improve reach and footwork, and began a daily four-hour, on-court practice regimen. (Previously, she had been practicing for an hour a day.)

Looking back on that shift in her practice, Navratilova commented, “All that training improved my reaction time and speed. I could hit the ball harder. I could run just as hard at the end of a match as I did at the beginning.”

At the time, this form of cross-training was unheard of in tennis; players were stuck with basic practice routines of running stadium steps and hitting balls for hours. Because Navratilova was the only player training this way, she had a tremendous physical advantage, which allowed her to dominate. Once she began to win consistently, Navratilova told us, she “got religion.” Martina then applied the same rigor to improving her diet and her mental, strategic, and emotional approach.

The rest, as we know, is history; Martine enjoyed a record-setting history covering a four-decade career of winning.

Success in sales takes more than just knowing how to recite your company’s value proposition…dedicate to your craft – and sales fitness like Martina dedicated to her tennis.