How to Turn
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Creative Opportunity 251
hit the ball. After a few easy hits like this, he was knocking the ball a country mile, and I had a friend for life.
The Salesman Who Practiced "Not Selling" You can use the same technique to "hit the ball" in selling, teaching, or running a business. A young salesperson complained to me that he froze up when calling on prospects. His one big trouble was his inability to properly reply to the prospect's objections. "When a prospect raises an objection or criticizes my product, I can't think of a thing to say at the time," he said. "Later, I can think of all kinds of good ways to handle the objection." I told him about shadow-boxing and about the kid who learned to bat by letting the ball go by with the bat on his shoulder. I pointed out that hitting a baseball or thinking on your feet requires good reflexes. Your Automatic Success Mechanism must respond appropriately and automatically. Too much tension, too much motivation, or too much anxiety for results jams the mechanism. "You think of the proper answers later because you're relaxed and the pressure is off. Right now your trouble is you're not responding quickly and spontaneously to the objections your prospects throw at you. In other words, you're not hitting the ball that the prospect throws." I told him first of all to practice a number of imaginary interviews-actually walking in, introducing himself to a prospect, making his sales pitch-then imagining every possible objection, no matter how screwballish, and answering it out loud. Next, he was to practice "with his bat on his shoulder" on an actual live client. He was to go in with an "empty gun" as far as intents and purposes were concerned. The purpose of the sales interview would not be to sell. He had to resign himself to being satisfied with no order. The purpose of the call would be strictly practice-"bat on the shoulder," "empty gun" practice. In his own words, this shadow-boxing "worked like a miracle." As a young medical student I used to shadow-box surgical operations on cadavers. This no-pressure practice taught me much more than technique. It taught a future surgeon calmness, deliberateness, clear thinking, because he had practiced all these things in a situation that was not do-or-die, life-or-death.