Do you have an underhand serve at the ready for your business?
My favorite marketing lessons are the ones that can be applied to our personal lives as well as our businesses.
I also like it when the marketing lessons come from unexpected sources. Like tennis. 
I admit that when I watched a two minute video of Michael Chang from the 1989 French Open the other night I didn’t expect to glean three marketing (and real life) lessons from it, but, happily, I did.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova were my favorite tennis players but I always had a soft spot for Michael Chang.
Why? His performance at the 1989 French Open, of course.
Sure, it’s cool that he won it at only the age of 17, the youngest ever to win a Grand Slam. Anyone who followed tennis in the 80s and 90s knows that fact.
But of greater interest to me is how he performed earlier in that tournament against Ivan Lendl, who was ranked #1 at the time. Everyone thought Lendl would win.
Chang lost the first two sets and trailed in the third set, heaping more fuel on the belief that Lendl wouldn’t lose.
Then in the fourth set Chang suffered severe muscle cramps and really had loser written all over him at that point.
But get this: Chang was the one in severe pain yet the one who started cursing, questioning the empire and became visibly distraught was Lendl, not Chang.
Remember, Lendl was the #1 player and not in pain, so why did he get so rattled?
You see, Chang reacted to his pain by doing 3 things that we should all consider doing when in a painful situation or experiencing a dip/rut in our business:
1. Ignore the prevailing assumptions and be different.
Assumption: Pro tennis players ALWAYS use overhand serves.
Chang played an underhand serve during one of his serves and it really rattled Lendl. Lendl lost that point.
Assumption: Pro tennis players ALWAYS return serves from near the baseline.
During the final and most important point of the match, Chang didn’t stand at the baseline. Instead he stood almost inside the service box, in the area usually known as “no man’s land” in tennis. It’s suicide to return a serve as powerful as Lendl’s from that area of the court.
Lendl moaned to the official about Chang’s position on the court and then proceeded to double fault instead of serving up one of his famous aces. Chang won the match.
2. Practice the Discipline of Disillusionment. In other words, he saw his situation as it really was, not as he wished it would be, and acted accordingly.
So instead of just sucking it up, shrugging off the pain and trying to play through it, he thoroughly acknowledged his situation and didn’t mind looking silly doing things like playing a sissy underhand serve.
3. Quickly adapt to change and have a contingency plan. I very much doubt Chang entered the match thinking he’d hit a bunch of moon balls, use an underhand serve and stand well up from the baseline when returning a Lendl serve.
But as a result of his sudden pain he chose to react by adapting and improvising.
Chang went on to win the French Open seven days later. I bet the match against Lendl and making it through that severe dip had a lot to do with his ultimate victory.
Below is the two minute video of the highlights of Chang’s victory.
But first let me ask: Do you have an underhand serve at the ready for your business?
