Stop Practicing on Clients

There’s a better way to get your reps in. Most people just aren’t doing it.

A few days ago, we talked about practice, and more specifically, why people avoid it even when they know it matters. The short version is that practice has a way of showing you where you actually are, and most people would rather protect the version of themselves in their head than deal with that. That’s useful to understand, but it doesn’t change much on its own.

At some point, you’ve probably been in a room, maybe at a conference or a sales meeting, where someone gets up on stage and does a live role play. They take a scenario everyone in the room recognizes, a skeptical seller, a commission objection, something you’ve personally fumbled through at least once, and they handle it in a way that feels… easy. Not flashy, not theatrical, just controlled. They know when to pause, when to lean in, when to let the other person talk. And somewhere in the back of your mind, there’s a quiet thought, something like, dang… he’s good. How do you learn to talk like that?

Most people answer that question with something vague. Experience, personality, maybe confidence. But if you spend enough time around people who are actually good at this, the answer is usually much simpler and a little less exciting. They’ve just been there before, a lot.

There’s an old line from martial arts that says don’t fear the opponent who has practiced a thousand moves one time; fear the opponent who has practiced one move a thousand times. What you’re seeing on that stage isn’t talent in the moment; it’s repetition showing up as calm.

So this is the more practical side of that conversation. Not theory, just what seems to hold up.

First step: Block it.

The first shift is treating practice like it belongs on your calendar, not in your intentions. If it’s something you’ll get to when you have time, it will quietly disappear behind things that feel more urgent but aren’t more important. Fifteen or twenty minutes, a few times a week, at a set time, is enough. It doesn’t need to be long; it just needs to be consistent.

There’s a difference between swinging hard and swinging often, and most people overestimate how much time it takes to improve and underestimate how much consistency matters. It’s like going to the gym once, going way too hard, and then disappearing for two weeks while telling yourself you’re “sore.” You’re not carving out time for practice; you’re protecting time for future conversations that will actually pay you.

Second step: Just start.

Once you sit down to do it, the next mistake shows up pretty quickly. People try to role-play an entire conversation from start to finish, which sounds productive but usually turns into a messy run where nothing really gets better. It’s too much surface area. It’s like trying to fix your golf swing by playing a full round and hoping something clicks on hole seven.

A better approach is to shrink the rep down to something specific. The first thirty seconds of a call. One objection to the commission. One moment where you tend to lose control of the conversation. Run that piece five or six times in a row, adjust something small, and run it again. Smaller reps make it easier to actually improve something instead of just surviving the exercise.

Third step: The who (not the band).

The person you practice with matters more than people think. If you pick someone who just wants to be nice, you’ll both feel good, and nothing will change. If you pick someone who is overly aggressive, it can turn into something that feels more like sparring than learning.

You’re looking for someone who is willing to stay in the pocket with you for a few minutes and tell you the truth without making a show of it. Not your best friend, not your biggest critic, just someone who is also trying to get better. If both of you leave feeling comfortable every time, you’re probably just reenacting conversations you’re already good at, which is a great way to stay exactly where you are.

Fourth step: The bot.

This is where technology has quietly changed the game. You don’t actually need another person every time you want to practice. Tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Claude can step in as a stand-in client. You can ask for a skeptical seller, an emotional buyer, someone who interrupts you, or someone who pushes back on your commission. You can run the rep, ask for feedback, and run it again. It’s not perfect, but it solves a real problem, which is that most people don’t have a consistent practice partner and end up skipping it entirely.

There’s also a small advantage here that people don’t talk about much. You can sound as rough as you need to without worrying about how you look. It’s basically a batting cage for conversations. Unlimited pitches, no one keeping score, and you don’t have to chase the ball into the parking lot when you miss.

Fifth step: Smile for the camera.

Recording yourself is another one that most people resist for about ten seconds and then avoid for years. You don’t need a full setup, just your phone. Run the scenario, listen back once, and pay attention to where things drift. Where you sped up, where you lost clarity, where you said more than you needed to.

It’s the same feeling as hearing your voice on a recording, slightly off from what you expect, but that’s also the fastest way to make small corrections that actually stick. It’s uncomfortable in the same way that looking at game film is uncomfortable. You’re not guessing anymore, you’re watching exactly what happened.

Sixth step: Play.

Something else that tends to help is practicing recovery, not perfection. Most conversations don’t fall apart because of one wrong sentence; they drift because there’s no adjustment after the sentence.

So instead of trying to get through a perfect run, practice saying things like, let me say that better, or I didn’t explain that clearly, give me one more shot at it. That sounds simple, but it changes the pressure. You’re no longer trying to avoid mistakes; you’re learning how to handle them when they show up, which they will.

Seventh step: Spar.

As you get more comfortable, you can start to add a little pressure back in. Have your partner interrupt you. Change the tone mid-conversation. Make the other person a little more skeptical or distracted.

Not to make it harder for the sake of it, but to get closer to what real conversations feel like. Controlled difficulty tends to translate better than perfect conditions. It’s the difference between hitting a heavy bag and sparring. The bag doesn’t hit back. Real conversations do.

Last step: Game day.

The last piece is where most of this either sticks or fades out. You have to take what you practiced and use it in a real conversation quickly. Same day if possible. If you work on handling a specific objection in the morning, look for a place to use it in the afternoon. Not because it will be perfect, but because it connects the practice to the outcome. Otherwise, it just sits there as something you did once and then moved on from.

If you zoom out, this is less about scripts and more about familiarity. The people who sound calm in the moment usually aren’t thinking faster; they’re recognizing something they’ve already seen and responding to it. That recognition comes from repetition, not intention.

So if you want something simple to try, something that doesn’t require a partner or a lot of setup, start here. Pick five people in your sphere with whom you already have a relationship with. Call them, not to sell anything, but to practice having a slightly more intentional conversation. Slow down a bit. Ask one better question than you normally would. Hold the silence a second longer than feels natural. Pay attention to how you respond when they say something unexpected. You’re not trying to close anything, you’re just getting reps in a lower-stakes environment.

It’s not dramatic, and it’s not particularly exciting. But neither is the person on stage who made it look easy. That part happened long before anyone was watching.

TLDR
Block the time, or it won’t happen
Shrink the reps, one moment at a time
Get honest feedback, not polite feedback
Practice where it’s safe, so it’s not messy, where it matters
Take it into a real conversation immediately

-k

If you’ve ever walked out of a conversation thinking “I should’ve said that differently,” this is the work.

I write every week about what actually helps you get better at this, not what just sounds good in a room. Subscribe if you want more of it.