Sales unlike Golf, is a Zero Sum Game

Chris Bijou

Last week at the Players Championship, Tiger Woods played 275 shots over 4 days. He won by only 2 strokes over 3 other world class golfers. That means he was less than 3/4% better. He only played 1 in 137 shots better than the others. He only had to play 2% better than the next 13 other golfers to win. He walked away with $1.7M. They got $709K down to $237K. But, what if golf was like sales? What if no one got paid for second place? 77 golfers got paid that day. In sales, 76 would have gone home empty handed.

How hard would those 76 have practiced if they knew they were going home with nothing if they didn’t win?

How often do you hear sales people say, “We came so close.” “I thought we had it.” Do you know the worst position to be in, in sales? It’s Second place. It means you worked the hardest, spent the most time, used the most resources and ended with nothing. Zero.

If you were practicing daily to be consistently even 2% better than the competition, how many more deals would you win?