We’re all familiar with the phrase “fail fast,” especially if we’re familiar with the agile method of project management. As counter-intuitive as it might sound for those of us in sales, the theory is that if we’re not going to win a deal, we recognize this fact and get out. The quicker we get out of lost deals, the more time we have to win better deals. Having a Growth Mindset allows you to fail fast because a person with a Growth Mindset does not see the loss of a deal as a personal failure. A Fixed Mindset person sees it as a personal failure and so resists ‘losing’ the deal. We want people to have a Growth Mindset and fail fast, and we say this to our sales teams. But sometimes our actions are at odds with the ‘fail fast’ approach. Earlier, we looked at the practice of training salespeople in new products and then practicing these new skills on customers. I’ve never heard a salesperson say, “I sacrificed that deal to perfect the new techniques we’ve just been taught.” That would be sales career suicide. Maybe a blind spot we have in sales is not providing the environment where our salespeople can learn from failure. This will be significantly easier to achieve if we’re not sacrificing prospects and customers at the altar of training. In simulations, no prospects or customers are harmed; no deals are lost. Because of this, we can practice what we preach when it comes to ‘fail fast’ and allow our sales teams to learn so they can be more effective in the field.