GW out in the field
Practice Makes Perfect By Angela Vesco
I
t’s sale day. You are running around trying to make sure everything is in place. You are going through your to-do list for the day and check off the tasks you have already accomplished. Even after you have gone through your list, you still think about what else you could have done, but is sale day the best time to be thinking about what you could have done? We just got through watching the winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and you just can’t help but wonder what is going through the athlete’s minds as they compete. How do they prepare for an event of such magnitude and what is their mental state during competition? During their interviews and promotional efforts, we get to see a little bit behind the scenes of their journey to the Olympics. We find out that they have spent years practicing their craft. They have invested countless hours of their life working towards one single day of competition. They didn’t start training three months before the Olympics. If they had, they wouldn’t be at the
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Olympics. Second-guessing about their training and preparation does them no good, it only adds to the pressure. Now, preparing for your annual sale probably isn’t as demanding as preparing for the Olympics, at least not physically. But there are lessons we can learn from watching Olympic athletes.
Lesson 1: They prepare, and they start preparing early. You won’t find a successful Olympic athlete who starts training three months before the competition, so you shouldn’t either. As soon as you can, make sure calves are registered and data is collected and entered into the registry. As we all know, DNA testing is becoming a larger piece of the sales process and takes about a month to get results. I understand that there is an investment involved when it comes to DNA testing, but I would strongly suggest getting that process done well ahead of time so that even if there are testing complications, you will not have to worry about getting results back in time for the sale. Also, recording phenotypic data as soon as possible is a way to ensure that the EPDs printed in your catalog a month before the sale are as current as possible. Do your customers a favor, and give them the best information you can. As the adage goes, “Proper preparation prevents poor performance.”