STOPPING THE NEGATIVITY LOOP 51 staff members on these pitches. Some of them were neither comfortable nor experienced meeting face-to-face with powerful executives sitting across from them at a large conference table. I needed a pregame ritual to allay their nerves and get all of us "in the zone" together. My ritual was that from the minute we piled into the car until after the sales meeting, we did not talk about the presentation. We weren't cramming final thoughts into our PowerPoint presentation or rehearsing nuanced points. That would create more stress around the wrong thing. I made sure our discussion was purely fun. We made jokes, talked about weekend plans, gossiped, or played loud music. What a great first impression we made! The potential client saw a group of smiling, excited people who genuinely enjoyed working together. I believe that pregame ritual was responsible for our amazing 90 percent win rate from final-round meetings. Or, to put it another way, I know for certain that our success wasn't because of bullet 2 on PowerPoint slide 12.