10/18/2023-On this Day, Martina Navratilova was born

Martina’s approach to competing was revolutionary. It began with an unparalleled preparation routine at the time…and is still applicable to athletes and sellers alike!

On this day in 1956, Martina Navratilova was born in Prague. Navratilova dominated tennis for many years, winning 59 Grand Slam titles, including a record 9 Wimbledon singles championships, 167 singles and 177 doubles championships.

Why is this important to you, killer sales pro?

More than anyone else, Martina is known for taking women’s tennis to an entirely new level with her speed, aggression, fitness, and mental discipline. While she was athletically gifted, her discipline and dedication to performing at her highest level set her apart.

There’s a lot you can learn from Martina that will help you become the best you can be at your game.

In her early days as a pro, Martina was lackluster about her practice routine…she worked out for about an hour a day.

In 1981, after getting crushed by Chris Evert 6-0, 6-0, Navratilova began working with basketball and performance savant Nancy Lieberman to intensify her fitness and mental approach. (Get inspired by Martina’s routine by clicking below.)

Today, look yourself in the mirror and appraise your selling fitness.

What needs to happen for you to become more disciplined, more sophisticated against core selling skills, and more intense in applying your effort?

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.

Navratilova was ranked as the world No. 1 in singles for a total of 332 weeks (second only to Steffi Graf) and a record 237 weeks in doubles, making her the only player in history to have held the top spot in both disciplines for over 200 weeks.

Whether or not you’re familiar with Navratilova’s athletic accomplishments, this 3-minute video is a must-watch.

While you soak up all the winnings Martina has accomplished in her career, think about what she had to sacrifice to get it.