The Repeatable Swing: Success Is a Process
In golf, the goal isn’t to hit one great shot. Almost anybody who plays long enough will occasionally hit one right down the middle of the fairway. The goal is to develop a repeatable swing you can trust and a process you can return to, whether the last shot was great or terrible. I’ve come to believe business, and maybe life, works much the same way.
I didn’t learn that lesson in business. I learned it after failing at college twice.
I Needed a Reason to Go Back
At the time, I was working as a bartender. I enjoyed it, I was pretty good at it, and I discovered that I had a way with people. Someone suggested those people skills might translate well into a career in sales. I liked the idea and wanted something more for myself, so sales seemed like a logical direction. The problem was that I needed the education.
Armed with something I hadn’t really had the first two times, purpose and direction, I decided to give college another shot. I was a little older and hopefully a little smarter, but more importantly, I decided I wasn’t going to leave the outcome to chance. I needed a process.
My First Repeatable Swing
I came up with six rules for myself:
Show up. No days off.
Sit down front. Put myself where I couldn’t hide.
Take copious notes. If it was important enough for the professor to say, it was important enough for me to write down.
Participate. Be seen. Be heard. Ask questions. Get involved.
Do the extra assignments. Don’t settle for the minimum.
Go to office hours. Get to know the professor and let the professor get to know me.
None of these things were particularly brilliant, and that was the point. They were repeatable. I didn’t have to wake up every morning and decide whether I felt motivated because I had already decided what I was going to do. I simply followed the process.
Something remarkable happened. The guy who had failed at college twice started making the Dean’s List and ultimately achieved a 3.85 GPA. I don’t think I had suddenly become that much smarter. I had simply discovered something that would shape the rest of my life: A good process, consistently followed, can change your results.
From the Classroom to the Sales Territory
When I eventually got into sales, I brought that same thinking with me. I didn’t want to depend on luck, personality, the perfect territory, or being in the right place at the right time. I wanted another repeatable process.
Over the years, I applied that philosophy in three very different businesses: food sales, athletic footwear and apparel, and eventually Rogers Marketing, LLC, the promotional marketing distributorship my wife Lori and I built into a multimillion-dollar business. Along the way, I’ve been fortunate to receive multiple sales awards, and Lori and I were inducted into the Hall of Fame of our affiliated company for growth and contribution to the organization.
I’m proud of those accomplishments, but the awards aren’t the real story. What mattered was the process behind them. The same basic lesson that took me from failing college to the Dean’s List became the foundation of how I approached sales: show up, be prepared, do the work, be visible, build relationships, do a little more than what’s expected, and then repeat it.
The Positive Activity™ Process
Over time, that thinking evolved into what I call Positive Activity™. The basic idea is simple: We can’t always control our outcomes, but we have tremendous control over our activities.
Activity also affects mindset. Positive Activity leads to a more positive mindset, which opens us up to creativity and helps us find solutions that lead to greater productivity. That philosophy eventually became the foundation of my business-development process, which I think of in three words: GET. KEEP. GROW. Each one deserves its own intentional process.
GET Customers
You don’t build a business waiting for the phone to ring. Identify the people and companies you want to work with, understand why you can help them, develop your benefits statement, and build your prospect list. Then begin an intentional 7-Touch campaign using different forms of communication, including email, phone, handwritten notes, creative promotional products, useful information, and memorable “lumpy mail.”
The purpose isn’t to annoy someone seven times. It’s to create engagement. If engagement happens on Touch #2, great. Stop the campaign and start the conversation because engagement, rather than getting to seven touches, is the goal.
KEEP Customers
Too many sales processes end after winning the customer, when that should be the beginning of another process. KEEP needs its own 7-Touch campaign designed to continue building the relationship.
Thank them and check on their experience. Bring them ideas when you’re not asking for an order, recognize milestones, learn more about their business, do something unexpected, and show appreciation. Staying in touch when you don’t need something is how transactions become relationships.
GROW Customers
Once you’ve earned trust, you can look for ways to add more value. What other problems can you solve? Are there other departments you could help? What’s coming up in their business, and who could you introduce them to? After you’ve earned the right, you can also ask who they might introduce you to.
Growing an account shouldn’t mean figuring out how to sell the customer more stuff. It should mean figuring out how to become more valuable to the customer. Approaching growth that way changes the mindset from selling more to helping more.
You Don’t Need a Perfect Swing
This brings me back to golf. Every golfer wants a repeatable swing. You stand over the ball, go through the same routine, trust your mechanics, and swing, but the ball isn’t always going to go exactly where you want it. Business works the same way.
You can make the perfect sales call and not get the appointment, send a terrific proposal and lose the business, or do everything right for a customer and still lose the account. A process doesn’t guarantee outcomes, but consistently following one dramatically improves the odds of producing the outcomes you want over time.
That’s what I discovered when I went back to college, what I discovered building sales territories, and what I’ve continued to discover after more than four decades in sales and business development. You don’t need to wake up every morning wondering what you’re going to do to grow your business. Develop a process you can trust, execute it consistently, measure what’s working, make improvements when they’re needed, and then do it again.
GET them. KEEP them. GROW them.
Whether you’re trying to turn around your education, build a sales territory, grow a multimillion-dollar business, or hit the ball down the middle of the fairway, success rarely comes from one spectacular swing. It comes from developing The Repeatable Swing.