I Had to Start Over at Golf & Here's The Sales Analogy

When I started playing golf about four years ago, I was intrigued by a technique called the “single plane swing.” Challenging the mainstream is a core value for me, so I liked the idea of a non-traditional way to get good at the sport.

The single-plane swing technique is pitched as easier to learn and easier to ramp up to become very good. Another difference is that all the iron clubs are the same length. It requires learning a different way to address the ball and how to move your body through the swing.

I learned quickly and got good enough to win an amateur competition with a colleague. But after three years, I was not happy with where I was. I went back to my golf trainer, and he told me I was not really using the single plane swing but some creation of my own, and it wasn’t serving me. He recommended we start over with a traditional golf swing.

Now, I’m in the process of relearning, which is extremely painful. A swing takes about a second, and during that time from when you start your swing to when you hit the ball, there are thousands of things to think about. Where your eyes go, how to start the club in the backswing, how you turn your wrists, when to start the downswing to get the right swing plane, what the wind is doing, and so on. To get good, you rely on training your muscle memory, but my muscle memory is “wrong,” so I have to unlearn it and learn something new.

On paper, it looks like a super simple thing. Just change how you approach the ball. But in practice, it’s extremely hard.

This of course makes me think about sales and how it can look simple on paper, but in reality, getting very good at the profession is extremely hard.

Sometimes You Have to Undo What You Learned

Many salespeople enter the industry through fast-paced high-transaction environments and become very successful. Then they are hired into a complex sales environment, and it can get rough very quickly.

The skills for complex B2B sales are completely different from those necessary in a high transaction environment. And it’s not enough to know intellectually that this is true. You have to actually unlearn many old habits and relearn new ones. For this reason, a new hire with “experience” won’t always ramp up faster or better than someone who is completely fresh.

What Happens in a Split Second Can Take Years to Master

When you move into a value-based selling environment, there’s a lot to learn. There’s a more extensive sales process, more stakeholders, and more conversational skills to learn. You need business acumen and great questioning techniques.

But when you’re on the call with a likely customer, sometimes you’ve got to be able to “swing” in a split second and connect with “the ball” (the customer) effectively. These are the moments in which all of your training, practice, skills, and knowledge come together to either make or break.

It’s months, years, even decades of learning and bringing it all together in one split second of muscle memory.

Maybe it’s fielding a question from a major stakeholder. Maybe it’s establishing trust after a minor breakdown in communication. Maybe it’s noticing the moment the buyer becomes disengaged and generating just the right connection to bring them back into the conversation again.

We all know these moments. We’ve seen master salespeople navigate them with breathtaking aptitude. Just like we’ve seen a major golfer swing and connect and make that hole-in-one against all odds.

That hole-in-one isn’t just a hole-in-one. It’s months, years, even decades of learning everything there is to know about the game and bringing it all together in one split second of muscle memory, intelligence, and athletic skill.

You Need a Great Coach

No great athlete is great without a great coach. And the same is true in sales. When you’re learning something as complex and high stakes as how to win a complex deal, you need someone to help you perfect your swing.

My golf coach uses a camera to record my swings from behind and from the side. I could never see that without his help. Then he draws lines on the recording, shows me how my hand went up or my shoulder went down, and how that impacted the swing. Then we try again until I perfect what he’s trying to show me.

A great sales coach does the same for the sales team. They can look at your overall performance as well as your use of the process and methodology, and they can listen in on calls and see where you’re doing well and where you need improvement. They can help you improve your approach, how you’re using your tools, your stance in regard to the customer, and show you how to improve every detail to master the craft.

Of course, they can only do this if they have effective tools for the job, which is why at Membrain we’re building a coaching cockpit to make this easier.

Regardless of what tools they’re using, the reality is that a team with a great coach is always going to outperform a team with a mediocre or absent coach.

I have no idea where my golf “career” will go from here. I’m looking forward to the day I start to see real improvements from having had to relearn my approach. But in the meantime, I value the ways that playing golf clarifies the way I think about sales. I look forward to helping our teams and yours to become masterful at the game.