{"id":611,"date":"2015-03-05T04:27:02","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T04:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/?p=611"},"modified":"2015-03-05T05:47:36","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T05:47:36","slug":"the-hardest-sell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/the-hardest-sell\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hardest Sell"},"content":{"rendered":"

My summer routine is pretty simple: eat, coach tennis, eat, coach more tennis, eat, crash on the couch, repeat.\u00a0 If spending six days a week surrounded by kids under 12 every summer has taught me anything (other than patience), it\u2019s definitely that kids are hard to convince.\u00a0 Running up against an 8-year-old iron will is worse than skiing into a tree.\u00a0 But over the past six years I’ve spent as a coach, I’ve found two keys for successful manipulation<\/span> persuasion.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Play with Calico Critters.<\/strong> Kids won\u2019t understand or relate to anything you\u2019re saying unless you get into their world.\u00a0 One summer, a lady approached me and asked me to teach her youngest daughter.\u00a0 The whole rest of the family loved tennis, but it was the bane of Emi\u2019s existence.\u00a0 She hated practicing and had a difficult time even making contact with the ball.\u00a0 Our first lesson was a struggle.\u00a0 Drilling was unappetizing.\u00a0 Technique was a chore.\u00a0 At the end of hour, I learned that she adored Calico Critters\u2026 and thus every drill, game, and \"Calicoexercise we did had to do with Calico Critters.\u00a0 We saved them from the evil Bear Queen by hitting ten forehands over the net in a row.\u00a0 We represented teams of critters and had competitions to see which critters were best at volleying the most in a row together (I had to be a beaver, pig, dalmatian, and koala before the summer was out).\u00a0 Even though this was extremely corny to me, Emi loved it \u2013 and loved coming to lessons.\u00a0 Basically, successful selling to kids depends on how well you can frame the task in a way they can relate to.\u00a0 If you need to be a kangaroo for an hour, deal with it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n
    1. Find the Gatorade. Kids\u2019 brains work in mysterious ways.\u00a0 And nothing seems to motivate them more on a hot summer day than a cool bottle of free Gatorade.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t just give \"Gatorade\"them the Gatorade \u2013 they have to earn it by hitting a hopper on the fly with a volley during the Free Drink Game.\u00a0 Once I realized how much all the kids loved playing (and winning) this game, I started using it as a reward for technique practice.\u00a0 Since the more the kids
      \npracticed their good (ok, passable) technique, the better they performed in the Free Drink Game.\u00a0 When I figured out that 7-year-olds are not interested in learning good technique because it will make them better tennis players in the future and realized that Gatorade is the main goal in their minds, I became a much more influential coach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      So at the end of the day, don\u2019t be afraid to play with Calico Critters and use Gatorade because
      \nall you\u2019re doing is being an awesome salesman \u2013 using empathy and understanding to close the deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      My summer routine is pretty simple: eat, coach tennis, eat, coach more tennis, eat, crash on the couch, repeat.\u00a0 If spending six days a week surrounded by kids under 12 every summer has taught me anything (other than patience), it\u2019s definitely that kids are hard to convince.\u00a0 Running up against an 8-year-old iron will is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}