Selling Clients on Golf: How Golf Helps Your Sales Career
If you want to sell a product successfully, you need your audience to listen. With cellphones out and tablets ready, this can be difficult to do in a traditional meeting. An informal place like a golf course, however, can make this much less challenging. Playing a round of 18 with potential clients helps you build rapport and increases the chances your product will sell. Here’s how:
Personal Development
While golfing with a client gives you plenty of relaxing time on your own, there is also plenty to take from the game of golf that can be applied to improve your sales career on an individual level. Discipline, focus, and consistency are essential to the game, and they are essential to sales performance. These qualities can be honed through the sport and applied to your career, developing better decision making skills and learning how to respond to bad lies, unfortunate bounces, and the hazards of the course. Furthermore, playing with a potential client allows you to see his or her application of these skills and how he or she responds to certain situations.
Opportunities for Women
Golfing presents unique opportunities for professional women. It is an excellent way to assimilate with all coworkers, and it is a useful way to avoid being excluded from opportunities to meet new contacts and build lasting relationships. Since golf has traditionally been a male-dominated sport, participation is a good way to stay active, maintain a presence within a company, and preserve a competitive spirit. If you’re in a position where success relies on making connections, finalizing sales, and building a system of referrals, meeting at a golf course is a much-needed resource.
Shared Interests and Event Opportunities
A game of golf is a bonding experience. Whether or not you’re teamed with your client, you’ve secured a few hours devoted to shared time on the course and plenty of opportunity to talk business. Aside from enjoying a fresh change of scenery from the typical office hard-sell backed by a power point slide, you have the opportunity to relax and make your client comfortable on a personal level. If a purchasing decision is made, these feelings are likely to be carried on throughout the relationship.
Furthermore, a shared interest in golf opens the door for new opportunities and events in the future. Host events, create fundraising opportunities, or sign up for programs related to golf. This is an excellent chance to expand your relationship with clients, network by introducing them to coworkers and other parties, and help them feel more a part of your organization.
Improve your golf networking skills at Course Connections.
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