| BARRON'S
HERE'S A DIFFERENT KIND OF GOLF STRATEGY
Making Contact
HOW TO TREAT CLIENTS ON THE COURSE...AND HOW NOT TO.
By William G. Flanagan
A business contact-call him Al- invites you on a golf date. When you accept, he asks: "By the way, what kind of a golf bag do you have?"
You tell him you have a big, black leather bagwith tags on it from Pine Valley and Augusta. And just to make sure he doesn't get the wrong idea, you tell Al you are not interested in any freebie bag with his company logo on it. He laughs, then asks about your clubs. You've got graphite shaft irons and Big Bertha woods. Golf ball? You play Titleists.
When you arrive at his club, exactly on time, Al is waiting for you, introduces you to the club pro and has everything all set. He hands you a layout of the course, along with a sleeve of Titleists and a handful of tees. He asks if you're pressed for time, which you are, so he cancels lunch at the turn and suggests you play "ready golf."
Al's not a very good golfer, but he is knowledgeable and polite and knows when to be quiet. He has played this course of often, but offers advice only when asked. The one exception occurs on the fourth fairway. As you start to pull your nine-iron from your bag, Al gently warns that there are some nasty hazards hidden around the green. It might be safer to play a pitching wedge. You thank him, risk it anyway, hit the green and par the hole.
You're waiting for him to bring up businessand walking to the sixth tee, Al finally does. Gently. There's a proposal he has been working on, and he'd like you to take a look at it. You clear you don't want to talk shop, and he starts talking about Tiger Woods.
Five holes later, you rip your longest drive of the day, but it tails away and comes to rest on the cart path. "Great shot," Al says. "And that's a free drop of the path, of course." Jeez, the guy even knows the rules.
You wind up back in the clubhouse at seven over, one under your handicap. Even with Al's high handicap you've won by three strokes, and he's buying the drinks. As you start to leave, he says he'll call you in a week or so. He's a decent chap, you think, and his proposal will be worth a hearing.
Stop congratulating yourself. He's gone to school on you, and he's played you better than you played that fourth hole.
How did Al know you were a fast and focused player who doesn't like to prattle on about business while playing golf? And that you don't easily accept others' advice?
Answer: He learned it at school- a new kind of golf academy that teaches students not how to play the game, but how to play the golfers. Remember when you told Al about your big black leather golf bag with those expensive clubs?
From his half-day seminar on business golf, Al had learned that your bag is a tip-off to your personality. It marks you as a "director" type.
l has been taught that all golfers can be divided into four personality categories: relaters, socializers, thinkers and directors. And each should be handled differently on the course.
INVITE PEOPLE WHO MATTER. You want decision-makers, not the best golfers nor the folks easiest to get along with.
PLAN GOALS FOR THE DAY. Maybe it's just the name of a contact in another division of the company or a bit of dish on the competition. Maybe it's just to have fun and strengthen a relationship. But it's not for nothing.
KNOW AND ABIDE BY THE RULES AND ETIQUETTE OF THE GAME. Many golfers don't.
DON'T DISCUSS BUSINESS BEFORE THE FIFTH HOLE OR AFTER THE 15TH. Prime time: between green and tee and in the golf cart after your guest has gotten off a good shot.
AVOID ALCHOL DURING THE ROUND.
BE PREPARED TO PLAY "READY GOLF." It's worse to be slow than good.
PLAY THE BEST GOLF YOU CAN. An obvious "tank job" can be insulting.
AT COMPANY-SPONSORED EVENTS, SPREAD YOUR OWN PEOPLE AROUND. Consider the personalities of the players when making up foursomes.
PLAY FOR THE 20TH HOLE. The business you discussed needn't be closed at the 19th hole. Follow up with a letter, souvenir photo or other memento that will get you back in the customer's thoughts.
Since when did customer golf get do sophisticated? The name of the game used to be pretty straightforward: Lose to your betters. "Show me a man who is a good loser, and I'll show you a man who is playing with his boss," was accepted wisdom. Even now, no shrewd salesperson worth his or her expense account is going to embarrass an important client by beating him badly.
But there is a lot more to customer golf than the final score, according to Bill Storer, president of Business Golf Strategies, in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. "Think of it as a six-hour sales call,' says Storer, who stages seminars that "add distance to business golf."
Storer, whose handicap is 20, played many rounds of customer golf as a sales manager for AT&T/Lucent before starting BGS in the summer of 1995. He knew there was a market for his services; he had seen many business opportunities blown on the links. "Companies stage outings and have their own people playing together and their guests playing by themselves," he says. "Wasted opportunities."
Or worse. Storer recalls one outing where a young salesman quaffed one beer too many, then lipped his golf cart, dumping a guest on his head. The guest, who shouldn't have been invited to play in the first place, suffered a concussion and had to be taken to a hospital.
Storer teamed up with Richard Block, a biophysicist and golf instructor (handicap: 10) to devise their seminar program to help businesses get more business out of golf. Their clients now include Bell Atlantic, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Lucent Technologies, Uniroyal Chemical, Prudential Reinsurance, and a lot of smaller companies.
Computing Concepts, a computer service company, recently hired BGS to address its staff of about two dozen salespeople, including a half-dozen women. Most were around 30 years, and only a few were experienced golfers. Some had never played at all, though they soon will. Sal Pulitano, president of the company, wants his salespeople to take the kinks with clients, and he is planning to sponsor some golf outings.
Actually, it's an advantage that so any members of Pulitano's sales force were new to the game, said Storer. No bad habits yet, and they can learn the game properly form a pro. "Skilled self-made golfers are extremely rare," says Storer. "If you do not take lessons form a pro, you are putting yourself behind a very long learning curve."
The half-day seminar was all about "how to use business golf to build relationships and ultimately put bigger numbers on the bottom line." To that end, the attendees were given a few pounds of golf literature to study. The theme: Golf is more than a game it's their business.
Customer golf has come a long way from the days when the salesman with the six handicap blew up on the last three holes to make sure his client won. That kind of brown-nosing went out with wooden shafts. According to BGS, today's version is more subtle and scientific. |
mass pastime, a growing number of major companies – including Marriott Corporation, IBM, and Merrill Lynch – are sending young executives to "business golf " experts to learn the art of selling themselves on the fairway. The rationale: Rounds of golf are now the "martini lunches " of a generation ago, so companies need sales people with social graces and tactical savvy on the links.
