I talk about practice a lot…
…probably more than some people want to hear.
After more than 40 years in sales, real estate, speaking and training, I have become convinced that most people don’t have an information problem. They almost always “know” more than they consistently do.
Yet when I suggest practicing a listing presentation, recording themselves answering an objection, role-playing a difficult conversation or simply rehearsing what they are going to say before they say it, I get resistance.
The resistance is understandable: practice can feel awkward.
We stumble, forget what we wanted to say, or get a question we weren’t expecting, and suddenly that great answer in our head disappears.
But here’s something I’ve recently been studying that makes the case for practice even stronger.
Making practice harder can make you look worse while actually making you better.
That sounds backwards, but it isn’t.
Looking Good in Practice Isn’t the Goal
Think about how we normally practice: we learn a presentation or objection response, repeat it, and eventually get pretty good at the exercise.
That feels like progress, and some of it certainly is. But there is a potential problem.
We may be getting better at the practice instead of getting better at the skill.
A 2026 study published in Communications Psychology examined how people learned and then transferred skills when conditions changed. The researchers studied 241 participants performing a complex task under different levels of consistency and stress.
People practicing in consistent, predictable conditions became more efficient during training. But when conditions changed, their performance could be disrupted. The researchers point to a broader lesson from learning science: variability during training can slow initial learning while improving our ability to apply what we’ve learned when the situation changes.
That distinction matters because performance during practice and the ability to perform later are not necessarily the same thing.
Researchers Robert and Elizabeth Bjork have studied a related idea for years. Their work on what they call “desirable difficulties” shows that some conditions that make learning feel slower or more difficult can produce better long-term learning.
In other words, struggling isn’t always evidence that the practice isn’t working.
Sometimes the struggle is part of what makes the practice work.
I Learned This Lesson at an Open Mic
I’ve been a musician—or dreamed of one day being a rock star—since I was 13 years old. I love music, and I’ve played guitar since I was a kid.
But I was also very introverted and painfully shy performing in front of other people.
About 15 years ago, I met Ron, who has become a great friend. He regularly went to open mics. He is a very outgoing guy and invited me to come along and play with him.
For several weeks, that’s what I did.
I’d get up there and sing and play my three songs. I was nervous every time, but Ron was standing next to me. There was something about having another person up there that gave me enough courage to go through with it.
Then one night I called Ron and he told me he wasn’t feeling well.
He wasn’t going.
My immediate reaction was pretty simple.
Well, that’s it. I’m not going either.
Then I had a different conversation with myself.
No, Mark. If you want to get better at this, you’re going to have to take the risk. You’re going to have to go up there and do it.
So I went.
By myself.
I got up on that stage to play three songs I had played at home hundreds and hundreds of times. I knew those songs. I could play them well.
And I absolutely butchered all three of them.
My throat constricted. I couldn’t hit the high notes. I couldn’t hit the low notes. My breathing got labored. My hands started sweating and shaking.
It was horrifying.
But I didn’t die.
That may sound funny, but I think it’s incredibly important.
Nothing terrible happened.
People were pretty sympathetic. They encouraged me. They told me to keep at it.
So I did.
Every time I got back up there, I learned a little more about performing while I was uncomfortable.
That’s different from learning to play a song.
I already knew how to play the songs.
What I didn’t know how to do was play the songs while my heart was pounding, my hands were sweating, my breathing intensified and people were looking at me.
You can’t learn that sitting comfortably at home with your guitar.
Fast-forward about 15 years.
Today I recently stood up in front of 150 people at a family reunion, unrehearsed and unprepared, and sang a song to my wife, Carrie, a cappella.
I’m not telling you I’ve become a great singer. That’s not the point.
The point is that I learned something much more useful:
Just because I feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean I can’t perform.
And I learned it by performing when I was uncomfortable.
That first solo open mic felt like a complete failure.
Looking back, it may have been one of the most valuable performances I ever gave.
The easy performances taught me how to play the songs.
The hard one started teaching me how to perform.
The Same Thing Happens in Sales
You can know the script, the presentation and the answer to the objection.
You can rehearse until you sound terrific sitting comfortably in your office—but that is not the environment where you will eventually have to use it.
Suppose you practice the commission conversation and the expected objection is:
“Your commission is too high.”
You’ve practiced your answer and, after five or six attempts, you sound pretty good.
But Monday afternoon at a kitchen table, the seller may say something different:
“The other agent said he’d do it for less.”
“I don’t understand what I’m paying you for when buyers find houses themselves online.”
“I like you, Mark. If you’ll cut your fee, you’ve got the listing.”
Now what?
If I only trained myself to remember one answer, I may have a problem.
If I practiced the underlying skill of slowing down, listening, asking another question and discovering what is really bothering the client, I’m in a much better position.
The words changed.
The principle didn’t.
That’s the kind of practice that transfers.
Real Conversations Don’t Follow Our Scripts
Real conversations don’t cooperate with our scripts. Clients interrupt, change subjects, misunderstand us, get emotional, or ask questions in ways we’ve never heard before.
That’s why I think good practice should eventually become less predictable, not more predictable.
Once someone can handle the basic exercise, change it: the objection, the personality, the tone, the timing, the information available or the way the question is asked.
Recent research into leadership development makes a similar point: understanding a concept doesn’t guarantee that someone can execute it when conditions become difficult.
Knowing what to do and being able to do it under pressure are two different skills.
Practice Should Expose the Weakness
This may be one reason people avoid it.
Good practice isn’t always flattering.
I know what it feels like to have an answer perfectly organized in my head and then hear myself say it on a recording.
That’s not what I thought I sounded like.
Good.
Now I know.
I’d much rather discover that alone with my phone recording me, or in a role-play with someone I trust, than sitting across from a seller deciding whether to hire me.
That’s one of the things I’ve tried to emphasize in Control B4 Confidence.
We aren’t practicing so we can perform a perfect script.
We’re practicing so that when the script disappears, we don’t disappear with it.
The mistake during practice isn’t the enemy.
It’s information.
It tells me where I lose my train of thought.
Where I speed up.
Where I become defensive.
Where I stop listening because I’m already preparing my answer.
Where I know the material intellectually but can’t quite access it when the pressure goes up.
That’s useful information if I’m willing to look at it.
Make the Practice Progressively Harder
There is an important qualification here.
Harder isn’t automatically better.
Throwing someone into an impossible situation before they understand the fundamentals isn’t productive practice. It’s frustration.
The difficulty should grow with the skill.
Learn the principle.
Practice it in a simple situation.
Get reasonably comfortable.
Then introduce variation.
Then uncertainty.
Then some pressure.
Then try something you weren’t expecting.
Think about my experience with music.
Playing guitar alone in my house mattered. I needed to learn the songs.
Playing with Ron mattered. I needed to experience performing in front of people with somebody beside me.
Playing alone at the open mic was the next level.
I wasn’t ready for how my body would respond. But I couldn’t have learned how to deal with that response without experiencing it.
And then I had to do it again.
That’s progression.
The purpose of practice isn’t to become comfortable with the exercise.
I remember the stories of Tiger Woods hitting golf shots while his father, Earl, tossed pebbles at him during his swing. That created mental toughness, concentration and performance. What could that level of practice under pressure do for your career performance?
The purpose is to become capable when the exercise is over.
What Happens When the Customer Doesn’t Follow the Script?
That’s the test.
Can you listen instead of react?
Can you ask another question when you don’t immediately know the answer?
Can you stay composed when somebody challenges your value?
Can you organize your thoughts while someone is waiting for your response?
Can you apply the principle you’ve learned without having somebody tell you which technique you’re supposed to use?
That’s much closer to professional competence.
And it changes the way I think about confidence.
Confidence isn’t knowing exactly what’s going to happen.
In sales, leadership and life, we rarely get that luxury.
Confidence is trusting that you’ve practiced enough to handle what happens when it’s different from what you expected.
So the next time practice feels awkward, don’t immediately assume you’re bad at it.
And don’t assume that the person breezing through the exercise is learning more than you are.
You may look worse precisely because you’re working on something harder.
The question isn’t:
“How good did I look during practice?”
The question is:
“What will I be able to do when this is real?”
That’s the standard that matters.
And maybe the best way to think about practice is this:
Don’t train for the script. Train for the surprise.
That’s Time Tested Mastery.