What’s your greatest sales tool:  your website?  Brochures? Referrals?  Actually, no.  While all of these are helpful, the answer lies closer to home.  YOU are your greatest sales tool: Your mind, your voice, your physicality.  If you’re like most sellers, you probably spend the least time (if any) preparing this tool than anything else.

Approaching a sales call without properly preparing your instrument is like an actor warming up in front of his audience.  Once the curtain rises or camera rolls, an actor must be “on” or he will lose his audience.   In sales, your client is your audience: Can you afford to lose them because you didn’t take five or ten minutes to prepare?

Lack of personal preparation can keep you from effectively engaging, communicating and persuading — and the greatest brochure in the world can not overcome that!

Here is a ten minute physical warm-up that will have you performing at your highest potential on every sales call!

1. Proper Breathing: Ever feel like you’re breathing and speaking from the neck up –or even find yourself holding your breath?  Communication starts with the breath.  If you’re feeling the stress these days (and who isn’t?) it’s probably effecting the way you breathe.  Proper breathing is from the diaphragm.  Place a hand under your rib cage and breathe in until you feel it moving.  This deep breathing gets the oxygen flowing, which helps us think clearer and quickens our ability to respond.
2. Power Breathing: Need a double espresso before you really get going?  Try accelerating the oxygen circulating in your system by doing what’s called “energy” breathing:  Breathe in through the nose for four counts, hold for four, and then breathe out through the mouth for eight counts. Do this several times.
3. Release Tension: Often we hold tension in our bodies without being consciously aware of it.  Tension is the enemy of good communication; it keeps you from communicating as freely as you could.  Do a tension check to get rid of any hidden tension by starting with your head and working your way down to your feet, tensing up each muscle group as you go.  Hold the tension for fifteen seconds, then release.
4. Energize Your Body: Stand up and stretch; reach up to the sky.  Shake a leg; do the hokey pokey!  It’s true what they say:  “Move the body and the brain will follow.”
5. Warm up Your Mouth: Our mouths are key to communicating, and even if you think you talk a lot – you may not be communicating at your best.  Spend a little time warming up each part of the mouth with the following exercises:

• Lips:  Say: “ba-ba-ba pa-pa-pa”  and repeat.
• Tongue: “ta-ta-ta da-da-da”
• Back of throat:  “ka-ka-ka ga-ga-ga”
• Tongue twisters:  Try saying each one of these several times in a row, getting faster and faster:  “Sushi chef-sushi chef…”  “Rubber baby buggy bumpers…”
• “Unique new York…”

6. Connect Your Voice to Your Body: Make a fist and punch the air while saying a hard sound like “pa” or “ba;” Imagine throwing your voice to the other side of the room with each jab.

Now you can pick up that phone with the confidence that you are performing at your best.

Next week:  “How to warm up your mind & your attitude. ”