Chess

Chess

Written By Jeffrey Gitomer
@GITOMER

KING OF SALES, The author of seventeen best-selling books including The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, and The Little Gold Book of Yes! Attitude. His live coaching program, Sales Mastery, is available at gitomer.me.

Chess

If the object of the game is to capture the king, then it’s your job to understand, plan, and execute a winning strategy to get in the castle. If you can’t get in the castle, you will never get to the king.

Once you’re in the castle, everyone from a pawn to a rook can help you get to the king. Don’t overlook pawns. Even though they can only move one space, they’re very powerful players in the game of business chess.

Once the king is in site, you must move relentlessly, one space at a time, thinking ahead three moves to check, check again, check again, and finally check mate! It may take four or five exposures of your best players to capture the king. You may risk being captured or even losing the match, but the reward of capturing the king is something very few are able to do.

Great chess players and great salespeople have many things in common. But one of the most powerful is what gets the average player to be great, the average salesperson to be great. The word is PRACTICE. The arena is real-world situations. Don’t practice with other salespeople. Practice with customers. That will give you the real understanding of where the king is, why the king buys, and how to capture the order.