Weekly Sales Tips: The “Pre-Shot” Routine
Today we’re gonna borrow a term from the golf world to describe one of the sales basics, the pre-shot routine.
I’m not a great golfer, but I do understand the principle of a pre-shot routine. It is the ritual that golfers go through, before every shot to make sure that they are fully prepared. This is what the best golfers in the world do.
These routines are critical because they set you up for excellence. It is an excellence habit, and it ensures that you are fully prepared.
You’re about to talk to a prospect. Are you ready? Are you in it?
Just a few moments of mental preparation will go a long way to enhancing the quality of the conversation that you are about to have. You know one of the things that I like to do when I’m out and about is, I like to spy on salespeople and just get a sense of how mentally prepared they are. I admit I’ve been known to stand, behind a clothing rack at a Nordstrom and just spy on salespeople. You get, you can learn so much without even having a conversation, but mostly I want to see, how prepared are they for that next encounter?
It’s time to get strategic. Let’s develop your own pre-shot routine. We want to look at three things, positive energy, the expectation to get the sale, and facial posture.
It all begins with positive energy in your pre-shot routine. A major objective here is to make sure that you are as positive as you could be. That doesn’t mean you have to be bubbly or giddy or coming out of your shoes. It means you need to bring your best positive energy.
What are you doing during your pre-shot routine to make sure that that positive energy is very, very strong?
Next, we have expectations of the sale. In your pre-shot routine you’re thinking, how do I advance this sale to its culmination, to the point where the buyer wants to buy? You want that path in your brain before you begin.
Finally, the third point is to develop a strong, what I call facial posture. It’s a lift to the face. That’s how we show energy. The people can see us and they can see that person is into this. They want to be here.
Now it’s time for you to start working on your own personalized pre-shot routine. Write down just a couple of bullet points as to what that looks like, and then keep it on your desk or maybe next to your phone. The key here is intentionality and repetition.
When we think about intentionality, it means that no one accidentally wins a race, no one accidentally sells anything. You have to be intentional about being your best self, but it also means repetition. That is that you want to make sure that your pre-shot routine is something that you do over and over again, every single time. You don’t want to greet a customer without being there as your best positive energy self.
That pre-shot routine separates you from everything that you were doing and focuses on what’s most important now. The relationship with your new customer.
Until next time my friends learn more to learn more.
