One of the first things you learn in tennis is the forehand ground stroke. Once you get the fundamentals of the stroke (the proper grip, early preparation, making contact with the ball, and follow through), you have the makings of a pretty decent forehand.

My forehand is not so great. My backhand is another story. Interestingly, the dynamics are the same but for some reason my backhand comes much more naturally for me.

I love tennis.  It’s a game of technique, strategy, and mental fortitude. In many ways comparable to business, which I also love.

There are way too many aspects of tennis and business to tackle in just one article so I wanted to focus on two: Preparation and Follow-Through.

Preparation: Getting yourself prepared and ready for business, just like in tennis is one of the most basic concepts you can master. Preparation allows you to get ready for what’s coming. It gives you the opportunity to get in position, get a strategy and move forward. In the game of tennis, having good racket preparation has everything to do with how well you’re able to make contact with the ball, hit the sweet spot and drive the ball where you want it to go. It sets you up for ultimate success.

In business there’s a saying, success happens when preparation and opportunity meet.  We know that opportunities abound all around us, so the question is how do we prepare ourselves to take advantage of them. In tennis, you have to prepare early so you can take the ball early. Business should be the same. I believe that all starts with a CLEAR vision, a concrete goal and a plan of action.

• What do you want to see happen overall?
• What is the specific goal you are trying to achieve?
• What kind of results do you want?
• What will you do to put everything into motion, e.g. what actions will you take regularly and consistently?

Follow-Through: Now follow-through is a different animal all together. Did you know that in tennis, you can fully prepare, make good contact with the ball and fail to follow-through and end up with a ball in the net? That’s my biggest problem with my forehand (the follow-through) and it can be a really big problem in business. Follow-through is critical. When you don’t follow-through in tennis basically what happens is you stop mid-way through the motion. That’s exactly what you’re doing in business when you don’t make the call, write the letter, send the email, submit the proposal, etc. It’s like stopping in the middle of an opportunity and just leaving it there, at the net.

There are a lot of reasons why we don’t follow through, none of which are good enough. In tennis, I think it’s both a case of deception and over anticipation, making contact with the ball and thinking you’re done. That happens in business as well. We make a contact or connection and we think we’re finished. We want to believe that that’s enough to get us the results we want, but it’s not. Like tennis, it’s all about technique and developing good habits. You have to follow-through consistently all the time. Sometimes you’ll still get a ball in the net, but your percentages go up considerably. This is the same stance in business. Follow-through, follow-through, follow-through, until you see the results you want. Build it into your systems and processes so it becomes a habit. The technique, strategy and methods you will have to develop, but keep these questions in mind:

• How do you/will you keep up with potential prospects, strategic alliances, clients/customers?
• What kind of system or tool do you need in place to ensure information is distributed in a timely and consistent manner?
• How often do you connect and touch base?
• Are you effectively building upon your network and relationships?
• Are you as accountable as you should be?

In between preparation and follow-through there are many things happening, but if you don’t begin right and you don’t end right, what happens in the middle won’t make a whole lot of difference.