“Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex...” – Norman Vincent Peale

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his first symphony when he was eight. Bo Jackson played for professional football and baseball teams, and was great in both. Michael Phelps is the youngest male ever to set a swimming world record and is the most decorated Olympian of all time.

While these people may be born with an innate genius that allows them to master a talent quicker than their counterparts, it doesn’t mean they became a genius overnight. They still had to practise day in and day out to accomplish their feat.

What would have happened if Mozart had stopped playing after he wrote that first symphony or if Phelps had stopped swimming after the first medal? They would not have been remembered like they are. Yes, they might be born a genius, but they pushed their genius with regular practice and repetition.

In his book ‘Outliers’, Malcolm Gladwell popularised the theory of “10,000 hours of practice is the magic number of greatness”. He said that with enough practice, anyone could achieve a level of proficiency as great as that of a professional.

When a baby starts walking, he falls umpteen times, but he gets up each time and walks again. When a child starts riding a cycle, he falls, he gets hurt and he sits on the cycle again. He does that again and again until he can ride the cycle confidently, and might later even dare to ride it without holding hands or do a free wheelie.

See, all this didn’t happen overnight. It happened because the baby and child repeated their actions everyday, and continued to do that. Without fail.

With practice and repetition comes perfection. When you train yourself for something repeatedly, you become a natural. It becomes a procedural/muscle memory in your brain.

It’s a memory that allows you to do a certain action or develop a skill quicker or more naturally.

However, this memory can be lost. Yes, just because you master a skill doesn’t mean you won’t lose it in the future. If you don’t practise it, you lose it. It’s as simple as that.

Why do you think yoga gurus practise yoga and meditation daily? Why do athletes run and train? It’s to fine-tune their skill and make it sharper.

Bruce Lee once said — “I fear not the man who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times”.

However, it holds as much true for sports and games, as it does for studies, professional skills and the business industry.

In the retail industry, there are salespeople who refuse to take the sales training. They say they don’t need the training because they know it all, they have heard it all before. They have developed the sales skills through hard work and learnt the techniques from previous training sessions. But, the question here to be asked is — “Do they practise their sales skills daily?”

Even the mighty iron (the metal) gets rusted when not in use. The same thing happens to a person’s skills. When the skills and techniques are not used, they become corroded and lose their edge. Hence, it’s critical that salespeople regularly practise their sales training basics, even if they think they are too experienced and skilled to do it.

Make a daily habit of practising your selling skills. And, they will become a part of you... your innate quality which will become your unconscious competence. And, selling will become a second nature for you. You would always know what to ask the customers, how to behave around them, how to answer their queries and how to push them for more sales.

Remember, opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor. A retail dancer’s life is all about repetition where the body moves before the mind does.

Your fundamental skills have now become embedded techniques for which you don’t even have to think anymore. And, this is the road to retail mastery.

So keep on practising your core skills and keep on repeating them regularly... they should be a part of your daily habit. A part of your subconscious.

“To sum it up all, it’s about repetition...” — David Jackson.

The writer is CEO of Thought Leaders Middle East.