Eric Lofholm Training For Sales Mastery

Sales scripting has a HUGE influence on professional sports.  I am a big sports fan and I am always fascinated how agents, athletes, and owners use sales scripting to influence negotiations.

LeBron James is the biggest free agent in the history of sports.  LeBron has been the MVP of the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the last 2 years.  Right now he is free to sign with the team of his choice.

Six teams meet with LeBron for scheduled appointments last week.  These meetings lasted anywhere from two to four hours.  I would imagine that over 100 hours went into the preparation of each presentation!  (How much time do you spend preparing for important sales presentations?)

Jay Z and LeBron James

One of the teams that met with LeBron was the New Jersey Nets.  Prior to the meeting very few people gave the Nets a change to land LeBron.  After the meeting the Nets were considered one of the front runners.  What changed?  What changed was the Nets delivered a killer sales script!  During the presentation they focused on the benefit of LeBron becoming a global icon.  Jay Z is part owner of the Nets.  Jay Z is a global icon in the music industry.  He is married to Beyonce.  Beyonce is a global music superstar.  Part of the Nets approach was if you sign with us Jay Z will mentor you!  Jay Z told LeBron he would help him create a clothing line and help him expand his brand globally.

Mikhail Prokhorov is the Russian Billionaire owner of the Nets.  He was also present in the meeting with LeBron.  Prokhorov told LeBron his vision is to make the Nets a global team.  Imagine if a Billionaire and Jay Z were delivering a sales script to you and part of the benefit is they were both going to personally help you expand your brand globally.  That would be pretty hard to say no to.

Always remember that influence happens in an instant.  Where LeBron ultimately signs as a free agent may come down to one sentence that was delivered during one of the presentations.

Now let’s talk about something very important to you.  Let’s talk about what you can learn from the Nets presentation to Lebron.

The first big takeaway is the preparation they did for the presentation.  I have a question for you.  Have you been spending enough time preparing to deliver your important presentations?  If the answer is no, create an intention to consistently prepare high quality sales presentations.  Joe Stumpf is a legendary sales training in the real estate field.  One of the points Joe makes is you are either delivering a presentation or you are preparing to deliver a presentation.  The example Joe uses to drive the point home is about Michael Jordan.  When Michael Jordan played basketball he was statistically one of the most consistent players of all time.  Michael Jordan was either playing in a basketball game or preparing to play in a basketball game.  The key idea is to place value on preparation.

The second big takeaway is about creativity.  Selling is a thinking man’s game.  Selling is a thinking woman’s game.  When you sell look for angles.  The Nets took a creative approach in their sales presentation.  They were probably the only team that focused on taking LeBron’s brand global.  My mentor, Dr. Donald Moine, taught me to be creative when creating my sales scripts.  Look for ways you can be creating when writing your sales scripts.

Would you like to learn cutting edge sales scripting ideas?  I recently did a webinar where I revealed several script writing golden nuggets.  To watch the webinar now go to http://saleschampion.com/eric-lofholm/scriptingvideo/

I have a simple, powerful message for you in this blog post.

July 1 is the first day of the second half of the year.  It is like a mini January 1.

Now is the time to start thinking about what is going to be different for you during the second half of the year.

Action Exercise

Spend 1 hour or more creating a plan for the second half of the year.  Include your business and your personal life.  If you are willing to commit to doing this send me an email to wins@ericlofholm.com and put I commit to spend 1 hour or more creating my plan for the second half of the year between now and July 1.