What can salespeople learn from Ronnie Coleman?
Ronnie Coleman is widely considered to be one of the best, if not the best, competitive bodybuilder of all time. He won the highest award in bodybuilding, Mr. Olympia, 8 times, consecutively. He was known for his very outgoing personality which can be seen on YouTube in his many training montages. He is an icon of bodybuilding, shouting phrases like “lightweight” “yeaaaah buddy” “aint nothin but a peanut” “everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but aint nobody wanna lift that heavy ass weight”. All while doing things like squatting 800 pounds for reps. He was also a full-time police officer.
Work ethic
Obviously, to be a bodybuilder of the stature of Ronnie Coleman you need to have a tremendous work ethic. To build a physique that he was able to obtain you need to put in the work on a 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. Between the amount of actual physical training you have to do, the hours of cardio, the hours of food preparation and organization, the hours of eating (when you’re that big, eating becomes a full-time job to sustain that level of muscle, even while dieting). And while working as a police officer. Ronnie Coleman very obviously had an amazing work ethic.
The time commitment required to achieve all of the above would have been significant. To achieve what most consider the best bodybuilding record of all time while balancing all of those different aspects of his life between training, family, diet, work, religion (Coleman is a devout Christian) is insane. Especially considering the fact that bodybuilding (at a high level) naturally attracts extremely driven Type A overachievers.
Salespeople can look at this work ethic with great admiration. To be successful in sales you have to be great at working hard while balancing several different tasks such as building lists, calling prospects, emailing prospects, reaching out to them on LinkedIn, following up, having sales calls, having meetings, keeping your CRM up to date and a plethora of other tasks. Take a look at Ronnie Coleman and realize that you definitely can balance all of these tasks and achieve them to an extremely high standard given sufficient work ethic.
Extra mile
Ronnie Coleman is well known to have a reputation as one of the strongest bodybuilders to have ever lived. Contrary to popular belief, you do not actually need to get that strong to put on size specifically. While training with weights will get you big and strong specifically, to reach the size of Mr. Olympia level bodybuilders it is more a combination of high volumes (lower weight with higher reps) and drugs. However, Ronnie established his trademark as someone who liked to train heavy specifically. While training heavy is higher risk, it could be argued that it is also possibly higher reward at high levels of bodybuilding (at least can be seen in the case of Coleman). He believed that heavy training gave muscle a thickness and density that cannot be created through lighter training as effectively. It’s hard to argue with 8 consecutive Mr. Olympia titles.
Training especially heavy was something that Coleman did not necessarily have to do to succeed in what he was doing. It definitely carried some risks. But this did not deter him. He was set on achieving a particular goal and did not want to leave any stone unturned. He was willing to go the extra mile and do what he didn’t have to do by training heavy and doing what scared his competitors. It is this mindset of doing what scares your competitors (and probably you too) and doing it anyway to succeed in your goal. There is a well-known quote that goes something like “everything you want is on the other side of fear”. I think this is a good example of that.
Salespeople can take a leaf out of Ronnie’s book here by thinking and asking themselves — “What are my competitors afraid to do that might set me apart?” or “Where can I go the extra mile in my job to achieve success?”. This might be reaching out to particular people in certain high-level positions at a notoriously tricky account, it might be taking a completely new approach with your email copy messaging that you feel is going to work but risks you might miss quota if it doesn’t or it might be simply getting on the phone and making those dials in an industry where people say cold calling is dead. The things that scare you and your competitors are not willing to do will vary down to the individual, but are often known to you. Go do them.
Commitment and Consistency
Commitment is something that you need to have to succeed in the sport of bodybuilding. Even as an enhanced athlete, the results don’t get themselves. You also can’t get results by just going hell for leather once in a while or turning up on game day. You need to be putting in the consistent work in the off-season to gain high-quality muscle in your weaker body parts so that you have an improved physique the next time you’re on stage. You need to put in consistent work day in day out in the gym. You need to consistently be eating the right things, drinking enough water, doing mobility and rehab to stay injury free. You need to be sleeping a lot so that your body can recover and repair the muscles you’re using.
The level of commitment required to consistently perform the actions mentioned, above at an extremely high level, at the top of an insanely competitive sport, over a consecutive 8-year period, while working another job — is crazy. I am actually struggling to think of an example of a higher level of commitment at such a level of consistency, there might be some out there, and if there is, I’d love to see it. Ronnie Coleman clearly is an exemplary example of someone who I think we can all aspire to in terms of improving our own levels of commitment and consistency.
The key takeaways here for a salesperson is that you need to look at what you’re doing currently and define the key behaviors that are achieving the positive results that have you heading in the right direction. This will again depend on the specific goals of that individual, but once you have those key behaviors and goals you need to stop and ask yourself “Am I committed to doing these things consistently?”. You are what you consistently do, and if you are committed to consistently doing the right things, it’s highly likely that you are going to get the results that you want. But it is important to really realize the cost of what you are getting yourself into. Ronnie Coleman had to make huge sacrifices in his life to get where he was. I’m sure there were thousands of times that he had to do things he didn’t want to do and say no to things he did want to do. But he did all of this because he was committed to achieving his goal.
Are you committed to yours?
