In Sales As In Sports, Keep Playing Until You Win
Sales and sports make good cousins
While we all love watching live sports on television, sports are more than just entertainment. There are numerous parallels as well as some of our the most popular phrases we’ve borrowed from sports and sales. The tactics, strategies as well as the mental training, the training physical demands and the actual implementation of the basics, analyzing the competitor or opponent determination, and the lessons learned from sports are directly applicable to us as salespeople.
However, it’s interesting that the majority (but but not every) games allow the game to be decided on the court or track, without specific rules, like shooting or a coin toss for determining the outcome.
Playing until a winner is won
In baseball, there’s an absence of sudden deaths. If a match is drawn at end of nine innings (or 7 innings for softball, or 6 in Little League) does the first team to wap spbo live scores score the next triumph? Absolutely it isn’t. They play top and bottom of the frames till one is ahead, and each team has had at least one opportunity to score yet.
In negotiation and sales in negotiation, the first party to obtain what it wants won’t “win” until the other side has the chance to earn some satisfaction. If a “no” by the buyer does not mean that the game is over.
In soccer, they have two overtime periods however, they end up messing the situation by holding shooting if the game is tied. If we wanted to see the game determined by a shootout we’d simply take the game off and conduct an instant shootout to determine who won. The same goes for hockey. You could also take a break from the shootout and simply an ad-hoc coin toss or the high-card draw. It’s similar to deciding if somebody was planning to buy from us or not based on the same coin toss or flip or roll of dice.
In basketball, they have 5 minutes of overtime – as many as is needed until one team leads at the time of the buzzer. This is exactly how it is supposed to be. This permits for multiple lead modifications and scoring runs before finally deciding on the winner when the time runs out. In the case of sales, it could be similar to extending the discussion or agreeing to continue discussions with multiple give-and- takes or back-and-forths until the time was up or an arrangement was made.
In the world of racing there are no tie-breakers. Every race winner is at most a thousandth of one second. One person is always slightly better, a bit better well-prepared, or more efficient in the execution of the basics than other players. There’s even an extra time option when conditions on the track don’t permit the fastest time to finish.
It is the NFL model is distinct
Then we come to the NFL the most popular game to watch.. The idea is to let the game on the field determine games, not a random coin toss or a 60-yard field goal in the first possession. NFL owners have opted to apply the rules of overtime in playoff games for the regular season.
If it is time of the regulation. each team will be given at least one opportunity until the first team to score the ball does an touchdown. (What would happen if the opposing team had scored a touchdown on their first attempt?) When each team gets the ball for a single time and the team that is next to score is the winner either safety, field goal or touchdown. This is a minor tweak to the current rules of sudden death that really cuts down on the supporters. It’s a bit like “the first one to talk owns it” without further discussion.
In order to settle the ties of the college game the teams each get an entire possession from at least 25 yards. You can score the equivalent of two first downs, and after that, they can turn the ball over at times and lose it in the event of an interception or fumble or kick a field goal or get an important touchdown. Whatever they do, the opposing team may be able to match or surpass it in order to extend the overtime or be able to win the game.
Let it all be on the field
Let the teams play as they’ve been preparing for and show up on the court, field or track to play until a player is ahead when they reach the conclusion of the measured distance or duration – an in the form of an inning, a quarter, or a period or overtime.
In sales. Let’s not go home without having completed the task in the field to achieve our goal or going to overtime, even if we fail to finish the sale on the first day.