Gaurav Kumar is the Founder and CEO of Beyond Codes, Inc. and the Author of the book ‘Sales Lessons From Golf.’

There is nothing more exciting, or more dangerous, than a sales professional who can attack the game of selling with the strategic mind of a golfer.

I am a lifer in sales who, somewhere along the way, fell in love with golf. These may seem like two unconnected occurrences in anyone’s life, but with time I realized that there are too many similarities between the game of golf and the game of sales to ignore. What I did not expect was that playing golf would make me better at sales, and vice versa.

It's a subject I have written about before, but in essence, golf resembles life in several ways. You can play it deliberately or carelessly, carefully or sloppily. You can be a good person or cheat. And I've found that, much like life, and especially business, golf gives you back everything you put into it. You can see for yourself what kind of person you are and what kind of person you aspire to be when you play golf.

I find that once you connect golf and sales in your mind, a switch is flipped. Floodgates open between spaces that store golf skills and sales skills. The brain starts firing in new patterns. It feels like while others are searching for their next big “sales secret,” you already have it—it was just locked in a different part of the mind, hiding in plain sight.

These unique insights into sales came to me on a golf course. The insights were deep, exciting and rooted in logic. I tested the real-world applicability of these insights at my own company first. After a few successes with smaller value decisions, a day came when I was faced with a tough call and a question popped into my head: If this was the golf course and these two options were in front of me, how would I play my next shot? The answer appeared clear as day. The outcome was so profitable, it turned me into a believer.

Salespeople get a bad rap in the world for being pushy and forceful. Even when they bring solutions that alleviate the pain point for a customer, people can still be resistant and distrustful. The reason lies in human psychology—most of us hate to be sold to, but ironically, we all love to buy. This is a sales professional’s biggest conundrum.

The formula that beats this conundrum came to me on a golf course. A crude way of describing golf is that it is a game where players have to get the ball in the hole by hitting it, driving it, nudging it, forcing it and cajoling it while using the least number of strokes. A lot of people, including many sales professionals, see selling the same way.

We “hit up” our Prospects and “hammer home” the features and benefits in order to “win” deals. This sets up an adversarial relationship and creates a zero-sum game situation where there can only be one winner—for a seller to win and the customer to lose.

An enlightened approach in golf is to imagine that the ball wants to get into the hole and that the golfer is there to help it reach its destination. The ball is not the enemy but a partner with a shared goal. A player’s job is to guide, assist and help the ball reach the hole. This is a subtle mental shift, but in golf as well as in sales, mindset is everything.

Translated to sales, this means that the prospective customer should feel that the sales professional is their partner helping them reach their goal. Instead of being a "sales pusher," the seller becomes a "sales partner." A sales pusher bombards the prospect with a prepared opening pitch that only talks about what the seller wants to say. A sales partner talks to the prospect, asking powerful open-ended questions that are designed to uncover their deeper needs and pain points. A sales pusher brushes off and argues through objection handling. A sales partner acknowledges, reasons with and thinks through with the Prospect.

A truly consultative approach means treating one’s prospects as if they are already your client and then thinking on their behalf. A great sales partner should be even willing to send the prospect toward another solution if it alleviates the prospect’s pain. You would think that no salesperson would ever do that, but let me tell you, the smart ones do. For when a salesperson approaches a customer thinking they have a duty and an obligation to the community they serve, then their customers connect with them authentically and for life. This attitude always leads to stronger relationships and more sales.

Another lesson I learned from golf was about the importance of approach shots. At my company, our sales funnel runs through seven levels: from identifying a prospect to closing a sale. The approach shot equivalent in sales is all the steps that come in between (levels one through six). When I learned that in golf the greatest determining factor of success or failure of a golfer is not the first drive or the final putt, but the approach shots, I trained my sales team to start looking at the middle stages of the sales funnel differently.

A seasoned sales professional does not rush closure; in fact, they will even appear to slow down the process in the middle stages in order to spend time in confidence and relationship-building. Such professionals enjoy higher closure rates and are inevitably market leaders.

As can be seen, there are many ways that lessons in golf can teach us lessons in business—particularly when it comes to sales. From the way you approach your "shots" to the manner in which you play, both golf and business give back based on how much you put in.

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