Call Your Own Plays!

In football, having a solid game plan is a key to winning. Coaches have had their careers either made or destroyed based on the quality of that plan. In many ways the same can be said for your agency. If you want to succeed, you must have a specific plan, and just as in football it should be the result of hours of study and review.

Nevertheless, even the best game plan does not guarantee a win. You may have experienced this with your own business plan. You think you have crafted the perfect plan that will help you reach your goals and enjoy riches and a lifestyle beyond compare. But the plan hasn’t put you in the enviable position that you expected.

Why business plans falter
There are really two reasons why even the very best business plans do not perform perfectly. The first has to do with the execution of the plan. When reviewing the plays that make up the game plan in football, the coach usually draws the players on the board with Xs and Os (yes, hugs and kisses for you less sporty types, but in this case they represent offensive and defensive players).

The play is then diagramed with each player doing a specific task. The plan can fail even if just one of those little Os does not do what he was supposed to do. Similarly in business there are multiple influences on each play (sale) and even one thing being missed can erase all the other perfectly executed elements. This is why it is so important not only to have the plan, but also to break it down to the smallest aspects that affect it, and then practice and improve on each element.

For example, a football play begins with the snap of the ball from the center to the quarterback. While it appears simple, we were all recently reminded of just how important that first element is — as in the very first play in this year’s Super Bowl! As a former center, I know that getting the ball to the quarterback is imperative and I had to be successful before anything else could happen. So for hours on end I practiced that simple action over and over.

“You had me at hello”
In sales, the play starts with your greeting and, in most cases, it is over the phone. So the question is: Have you practiced your initial greeting for hours on end? You should. Your ultimate goal should be that each one of your clients responds to you with the following line from the film “Jerry Maguire”: “You had me at hello.”

The other reason that a perfectly designed plan, even if executed as designed, still does not promise a positive result, has to do with the opposition. The Os have clear directions, but what if the Xs are not where they are supposed to be? Unfortunately, the other team has a plan, too, and sadly their plan is not to make your plan look good. In the sales environment of your business, I don’t like referring to consumers as the opposition, but we do have to realize that potential customers come with their own agenda.

Your game plan simply laid out a play where they were supposed to buy the top-end package and become lifelong friends. Instead they want you to research 12 different options, squeeze the price down so that you earn a solid $1.99, or they may want to pick your brain for free so they can go book elsewhere. So how do you make your plan successful when their game plan is unknown to you and at times creates a need for a last-minute change? The quarterback has the answer.

The quarterback has the ability to call “audibles” on the field in order to make last-second adjustments to the play. If you are not a football fan, audibles can be called at any point before the play starts, and they adjust or completely change the original play. Audibles are very effective because they are called based on the current situation. In other words, if that extremely big linebacker is not where he was drawn on the board as an X, then you need to do something different!

Call an audible
As the quarterback of your business, you have the same ability. Not every customer is going to be the same. That’s why you need to have alternatives prepared so that you can adjust and win. But the key word is “prepared.”

When an audible is called, it does not mean the quarterback is just winging it. Rather, a new, well-rehearsed play is being used. You need to make sure that you have a number of alternative approaches for each circumstance, so when the client does the unexpected, you are ready to call the audible that will win the sale!