Source: Flow in Sports — Susan Jackson & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1999). Applied to the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale.

You have been in this call. You know exactly what to do. Step 2 is right there, "What's the frustration? What have you already tried?", and instead you hear yourself filling the silence with something else entirely. You watch yourself do it. You are not in the conversation. You are commenting on yourself having the conversation.

Susan Jackson went looking for what separates those moments from the ones where it all works. She conducted in-depth interviews with 28 elite athletes across 7 sports, not a survey, one-on-one conversations designed to find the patterns, and asked what produces peak performance.

The most cited answer was not skill. Not preparation. Not experience.

It was confidence.

And the deeper finding was stranger: not one of them could reliably reproduce their best performances by trying harder. The ones who tried hardest to get into flow were the ones who most reliably destroyed it.

What Flow Is, and What It Isn't

Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying peak performance across chess players, rock climbers, surgeons, and factory workers. He identified 9 dimensions. Jackson brought the same framework to elite sport and cross-checked it with her athlete interviews.

1. Challenge-skill balance. Too easy = boredom. Too hard = paralysis. In sales: the right ICP at the right deal size. A $3M company attempting to close a Fortune 500 contract is in the anxiety channel.

2. Merging of action and awareness. In sales: when Step 2 becomes reflex rather than recall, the buyer feels the difference between a salesperson executing a process and one who is genuinely present.

3. Clear goals. In sales: your goal per step is not "close the deal." It is "reach Step 2 frustration clearly." Process goals create the feedback loop that produces flow. Outcome goals create the anxiety that breaks it.

4. Unambiguous feedback. In sales: every step has built-in feedback. In Step 1, mirroring feedback is immediate, the buyer's posture either opens or stays closed.

5. Concentration on the task. In sales: the salesperson who needs this deal cannot achieve this. The need is an extraneous concern that never fades.

6. Sense of control. In sales: this is exactly what the 8 Steps are for. Not a closing technique. A control system.

7. Loss of self-consciousness. In sales: "Am I handling this correctly?" These are ego-threat responses, and they are the dominant internal experience of a salesperson who is not in flow.

8. Transformation of time. In sales: the best calls feel shorter. The call where you were watching the clock was the call where you were not in the conversation.

9. Autotelic experience. In sales: genuine curiosity about the prospect's problem is the closest available approximation. Before each call, identify one genuine question about this prospect that you actually want the answer to.

The 4 Blockers (and Why "Trying Harder" Is One of Them)

Jackson's research revealed that flow cannot be directly summoned. It can only be prevented or allowed. The prefrontal cortex, the part doing self-monitoring and self-criticism, goes metabolically quiet in flow. "Trying harder to perform" activates exactly that region.

Ego threat. The prospect who is more senior than anyone you have closed before. Fix: write down the worst realistic outcome before the call. Fear on paper does not consume the bandwidth that should be on the buyer.

Neediness. "I need this deal" is not motivation. It is interference. Fix: "I want this conversation to go well" rather than "I need this deal to close."

Self-consciousness. The ongoing internal commentary. Fix: the 8 Steps function as the cognitive scaffold that lets the commentary stand down.

Challenge-skill mismatch. Wrong-size prospect, wrong-level conversation. Fix: ICP criteria exist for this reason. A mismatched call is structurally flow-resistant. You cannot compensate with effort.

Prospecting as a Flow Problem

Cold prospecting is, by default, a flow-hostile environment. The feedback is delayed, the goal is unclear, and the stakes are high enough that neediness enters through the side door.

Define the process goal before opening your outreach tool. Not "I want five replies today." The process goal: "I will write 10 first sentences, each containing a verifiable observation about the specific person I am addressing."

Build a pre-prospecting ritual. Five minutes: write your worries on paper, two minutes of open body posture, recall one past conversation that worked. Then open the outreach tool.

Match the outreach tier to your current skill level. Writing to your top three dream clients first will not produce flow, it will produce anxiety. Work up to them.

What to Do This Week

Pick one sales call from last week where you felt off, not a bad call, one where you felt like you were watching yourself execute a script rather than having a conversation.

Ask: which of the 4 blockers was present? Ego threat? Neediness? Self-consciousness? Challenge-skill mismatch?

Name it. For your next call with a similar profile, apply one fix from above. Not all four. One.

The athletes Jackson interviewed were competing at the highest levels in their sports. The ones in flow were not trying harder than the ones who were not. They had simply learned to stop blocking what was already there.

Flow is not a state you achieve. It is a state you stop preventing.

The 8 Steps are how. If you want to build this into practice with a team of spotters who can spot which blocker is running your calls, start your free 7-day trial: https://www.strategysprints.com

Happy hunting. Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆