Don Shula, Head Coach of the Miami Dolphins, the undefeated Super bowl football team, says that to consistently win you must be Audible Ready. What he means is that you must be prepared for every eventuality. In football, it means being able to recognize what your opponents are planning to do on defense and being able call an audible, (a different play than the one you were prepared to use). In sales, it means being able to change strategy based upon changes in the situation. Here are a few examples you’re likely to encounter:
- You prepared for a presentation against competitor A and found out at the last minute that competitor A had already been eliminated and now you were up against competitor B.
- You thought that you had been dealing with the economic buyer only to find that the economic buyer was someone else that you had never met.
- The buying criteria changes during the presentation. Yikes!
- The economic buyer was fired and there is a new economic buyer that has a totally different personality than the person he replaced. Double yikes!!
You get the idea. How audible ready are you for your next presentation? How do you become audible ready? You play the “what if” game. Try to think of every “what if” that can occur then prepare and practice for all of them. What if you ask a question and get an answer other than the one you want? Are you ready for the answer you do not want? The team that wins most of the games is the one that prepares for all the “what ifs” during the Murder Board session.