Dr. Bob Rotella Conquers The Mental Short Game

I love the short game in golf. There's no question that striking a full shot is satisfying and momentarily rewarding, but quite frankly there's a certain sameness to it that fails to hold interest very long. The short game, though, is predicated on variety. Chips, pitches, bunker blasts, bump-and-runs, digging a ball out of the collar of rough a dozen feet from the pin--every shot is different, every shot makes you think, and every shot really, really counts. And then there is putting, which is the most nerve-wracking of all.

In The Unstoppable Golfer, Dr. Bob Rotella, golf psychologist to stars like Keegan Bradley, Padraig Harrington, and Darren Clarke, says, "...nearly all golfers have the physical ability required to pitch the ball, to chip it, to putt it. If we're not doing those things, It's because we're somehow stopping ourselves." In other words, we get in our own way.

Rotella says it's often fear that crowds our minds, pushing and shoving its way and calling out for negative images, contradictory swing thoughts, and herky-jerky responses. The solution? To achieve a state of calm by focusing on one thing: the hole.

He couldn't be more right, of course. If you focus on your target, visualize the ball getting there, and commit to a play based on belief in its success, you're more than half-way to a great short game. Rotella fills the book with stories of his students (patients?) who learned to quiet their minds and let their instincts lead them to better golf. He covers no swing mechanics, but does break down how your mind should work when faced with typical short game situations like pitch shots over hazards, getting up and down from a bunker, and lining up long putts to go in rather than just lag close. He has a special section on the "yips" in which he discounts the theory that there's some physical cause behind them but offers instead a solid, results-proven method to mentally overcome them.

The short game is the scoring game, according to nearly every golf guru I've ever talked to. You can drive the ball 340 yards, but if you can't get it in the hole, you can't put birdies and pars on your scorecard. Dr. Bob's book will help.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf

Don't Consult--Sell! On The First Call

One of the great myths about selling is that you need to make a series of calls on a prospect to determine their needs before you can make a proposal to them. If you’re selling anything less complicated than enterprise computing systems, this is time-wasting nonsense based on a misunderstanding of consultive selling. Why wait? You’ll speed up the prospect’s decision-making process and save yourself hours and hours of selling time (which you can use to make more sales) if you present a specific proposal on your very first call.

This suggestion invariably sends traditional consultive sellers into convulsions and they say things like, “How can you make a proposal without ascertaining the need?” “Won’t the prospect think you’re arrogant to come in with a proposal the very first time you meet them?” “What if your proposal is wrong?”

This response comes from a lack of understanding of my method. You’ll notice that I want you to make a proposal on the first call—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that call will be the first time you’ve visited the prospect. Nor does it mean that you haven’t done a needs analysis. In fact, the time and effort you put into needs analysis (before the first call) will dwarf that of a typical consultive seller who goes into the first call with questionnaire in hand. And your needs analysis will be more accurate, which will mean a more accurately targeted proposal.

Selling on the first call isn’t as simple as it sounds, of course. It’s not a matter of taking the same product to as many prospects as possible in hopes that you’ll stumble across someone that needs to buy something today. Nor does it mean that you ignore the prospect’s individual needs and try to sell them a one-size-fits-all product. To make a sale on the first call, you need to research the prospect in advance, ask probing questions during your presentation, and be ready to change your design or other elements of your proposal—on the spot. It takes preparation and a set of ears finely tuned to what the customer is saying.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Celebrate Books On Yonkers Waterfront

Hunting Elf, Weird Golf, Heart of Diamonds, and all my other books will be featured at Books Without Borders, a day-long festival of books, authors, music, and other attractions on the Yonkers, NY, waterfront Saturday, June 9.

Books Without Borders will encompass the entire waterfront beginning at the wonderful Yonkers Riverfront Library and continuing past the Yonkers Metro North Train Station through Ella Fitzgerald Park and culminating at the picturesque Pier and Amphitheater on the Hudson River.

Workshops, Seminars and Panel discussions will be held throughout the day. Literary agents will hold workshops, authors will read from their works, and books--including Weird Golf, Hunting Elf, Heart Of Diamonds, and the Dynamic Manager series--will be on sale. To add to the festive atmosphere, face painters and clowns will be in the Children’s Book area and music will be provided around the event area.

I'll be there from 10 AM to 4 PM, signing copies of all my books. Come on by and get acquainted!

Books Without Borders was organized by The City of Yonkers, The Yonkers BID, The Yonkers Library System, The Westchester Guardian and Yonkers Tribune Newspapers, WGRN Radio, and author Dennis Sheehan.

Woodmere Club Centennial

The Woodmere Club on Long Island's south shore sets the mark for classic style both in the club facilities and the surprisingly challenging golf course. Just a short drive from Manhattan, the club has a gorgeous Georgian clubhouse with a fitness center and dining venue, tennis, swimming, and a links-like Robert Trent Jones golf course that's both enjoyable and a fine test of shot-making golf. This year, Woodmere celebrates its 100th anniversary, a testament to the fact that class never goes out of style. The club was also chosen as the Club of the Year by the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association.

At first glance, the course looks like a bit of a pushover. It's only 6316 yards from the tips and not weighted with extreme elevation changes or heavy forestation. What it does have--narrow fairways, demanding greens, perfectly-placed bunkering, and water in all the right (or wrong) places--more than makes up for any shortcomings in the yardage department. And then there is the wind, which is the course's real secret weapon when it comes to protecting par. Hitting onto a par three that's all carry over water into the teeth of an Atlantic breeze is a heck of a lot harder than whaling away with a driver on a 450-yard par four.

Above all, Woodmere is a thinking golfer's course. The double dog-leg fourth hole is a prime example of how important precise shot-making is to the game. It's "only" 358 yards, but the fairway snakes around trees on the left and then on the right, meaning you have to hit first a perfect draw and then a fade if you want to reach the green in regulation. Straight shots will get you in nothing but trouble on this hole!

Big hitters will drool on the seventh tee. At 293 straight-away yards, it's perfectly driveable. You'll see some cross bunkers, but they're really not in play. What is a danger, though, is a bunker 200 yards out on the right, not to mention the trees lining that side of the fairway. And whatever you do, don't get your ball above the cup on this funky two-tiered green.

The back nine is notable for a pair of 185-yard par threes, the eleventh and sixteenth holes, that play side by side. Both are fully exposed to the ocean winds and both greens are fronted by water. In match play, it's not unusual for competitors to lay up and play for a four, especially on the sixteenth.

The seventeenth presents a host of challenges. It's 370 yards and usually plays directly into the wind. Your tee shot has to carry the water, avoid the fescue rough, and stay out of the bunkers squeezing the fairway in the landing area. Even into the wind, it's not unusual for better players to hit something less than a driver off the tee. That leaves a tough iron shot into a small, well-bunkered green. A long bump-and-run isn't a bad play for the second shot if the wind is up.

Woodmere has hosted three Met Opens as well as numerous other events in its proud 100-year history. It was also the playground of many notables like "Diamond Jim" Brady, 20th Century Fox owner William Fox, Henry Zeigler of Steinway Pianos, and actress-singer Lillian Russell.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf

On-The-Spot Thinking Makes Sales

Watch out for the impulse to “go back to the drawing board” when the prospect throws you a curve.

Inside, you’re dealing with your own desire to get out of a stressful situation when the prospect says that he or she has a need you haven’t anticipated or wants a different design element in the product you’re offering. You’ll want to retreat and regroup and come back another time with a different proposal, but resist the temptation. You are a professional, you know your product inside and out, so be ready to make changes!

Only after the prospect agrees that your product or service will meet his or her needs are you ready to bring up the subject of price and ask for the order. If you never get agreement on your product’s ability to satisfy the prospect’s needs, the price won’t make any difference, so don’t rush into it. Ask your questions, really listen to the answers, then ask the prospect to buy.

Creative sellers with open minds have an endless market for the things they sell. Some of us, though, actually have lots of ideas but are hesitant to use them because we’re afraid they won’t be good enough. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it puts the onus of judgment on the wrong person. The salesperson shouldn’t judge the merits of an idea—leave that to the prospect. If the customer thinks it’s good—it’s good! Put your idea in front of him or her using the best presentation skills you have, and let the prospect make the final judgment.

You’ll be surprised how often they decide they like your bright idea.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Making A Creative Sale

There are two kinds of salespeople, order processors and idea sellers. The first one serves a certain function in any business, but it’s the second one that will make the business boom.

Who are idea sellers? Salespeople who size up a prospect’s business and take them a proposal for a product or service to meet their needs. They plant the idea for the solution to a need in the prospect’s mind even though the prospect may never have acknowledged that need to start with. By doing so, the idea seller creates demand for his or her products.

Here’s an example:  Let’s say the prospect is an insurance agency and you, the idea seller, have a small business making gift baskets—those elaborate assortments of gourmet foods, trinkets, and colorful goodies that solve a lot of gift-giving problems. As a real idea seller, you will take a look at the insurance agency and think up ways they could use gift baskets to sell more insurance. They could buy a basket every week to award the agency’s top producer, for example, or send a basket to every new client as a way to say thanks. Maybe they could reward clients who go three years without a claim or send a gift basket to prospective customers as a door opener. In other words, there are lots and lots of ways the insurance agency could use gift baskets.

But if no one suggests it, the insurance agency probably would never think of it themselves. That’s where the idea seller steps in. You pitch one of these ways the agency could use the product and gives them a specific proposal (how many—of what—at what cost) on which to act. That’s idea selling in a nutshell. It’s very creative.

Gift basket makers are generally very creative people, so they should be very good at this. The key is to put some of the same wonderful creativity that goes into designing baskets into ways that your prospective customers can use them. I’m sure you noticed that the “ideas”  mentioned for the insurance agency aren’t different types of gift baskets—they’re different applications for the gift basket product. It’s conceivable, in fact, that the same gift basket design could be used in all four—or more—ways mentioned above. The creative part of the sales process is in finding new uses for the product.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Bill Pennington's Golf Book That (Almost) Saved My Life

In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess that I owe Bill Pennington my life, or at least the use of my limbs. A couple of years ago, after more than forty years playing golf, I suddenly lost my ability to putt. It didn't just have the yips. I had the yaws, the yahoos, and the you've-got-to-be-kidding-mes. I tried a dozen different putters including some that were clearly not legal. I putted cross-handed, one-handed, and would have putted no-handed if I could have figured out how to hold the putter in my teeth, but I still counted as many as 45 putts on some rounds. I was about to give up the game and take up a sane sport like chainsaw juggling when I read Pennington's NY Times column about putting while looking at the hole instead of the ball. That column saved my game, not to mention my fingers.

So is this an unbiased review? Mostly.

In On Par: The Everyday Golfer's Survival Guide, Pennington writes about golf in a way that resonates with the regular golfer. The subtitle notwithstanding, this isn't a golf instruction book. It's more of an extended, rambling conversation about the game like the ones you have with your buddies at the nineteenth hole. The difference is, Pennington knows what he's talking about, whereas your buddies....

On Par is full of gentle, self-deprecating humor and dozens if not hundreds of little stories that illustrate the beautiful ironies of golf. Like a conversation he had once with Gary Player about how humiliating it is to hit a ball into the water. Or the time he almost killed the club president's wife with an errant six iron, a club selection that reminded me of the story in Weird Golf that begins "Just ask the guy in the tenth fairway staring at the six iron covered in blood." Pennington also reveals how jealous Annika Sorenstam is of her sister Charlotta, who won only one pro tournament but has three times as many holes in one. In other words, if you're looking for a book to fix your slice, look elsewhere.

There's plenty here to enjoy and learn from without pages full of illustrated swing tips. Pennington writes about nine places every golfer should play (hint: it's not a list of courses), what the pros are like and how they got that way, and one particularly distressing chapter titled "Shanks, Choking, and Other Tales of the Dark Side." Oh, and there's a section about putting while looking at the hole that you don't want to miss.

More than anything, I think, On Par expresses an attitude about golf that more of us should have. As Pennington says, "It is a silly game, somewhat childish....The allure of golf is its simplicity, which leads to a thousand complexities." And more than a few laughs along the way.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf

Mount Kisco CC Spiffs Up

photo courtesy of Mount Kisco CC

I visited Mount Kisco Country Club a few days ago and was delighted to see the results of the work done over the winter. It's always refreshing to visit a club where the membership believes in the game enough to invest in their course.

I've always felt Mount Kisco is one of the most under-rated courses in Westchester. It has one of the best arrays of hole shapes and lengths I've encountered, with everything from short but tight par fours to three back-breaking monsters at 446, 453, and 466--all playing uphill! The par threes range from 163 yards to 208, and even the three par fives differ greatly from one another, running from 490 to 549 yards, one uphill, one with cross bunkers, another (the 17th) with water in front of the green. The greens themselves are small and devilishly difficult, adding extra teeth to the 6552-yard, par-71 layout.

Among other improvements, Mount Kisco spent a large, large sum during the winter months to upgrade the course drainage system. In the past, there were often problems with water in the fairways, not surprising when you consider that a network of streams meander through 13 of the holes. Today, however, even after three straight days of rain this week, we didn't encounter a single bit of water in any of the fairways. Not one!

The biggest change was to the signature tenth hole, a 201-yard one-shotter where the green is fronted by a pond and protected by flanking bunkers. Several superfluous trees were removed, mostly to improve turf conditions, and the pond was expanded and given a classic finished look with a stone wall enclosing it on three sides. The result is quite pleasing to the eye and serves to only increase the intimidation factor of a tee shot that has to carry the picturesque pond.

Also receiving a makeover of sorts was the sixth hole, a 349-yard par four with an island-like green surrounded by deep bunkers and swales. It used to be a dark and forbidding green crowded by grass-killing trees. Now, with the encroaching foliage gone, it has a whole new look that emphasizes the precision required for the second shot by making the green stand out from the topography. It's also a lot more difficult to judge the distance for the second shot since the back of the green resembles nothing so much as the eye-fooling edge of an infinity pool.

The changes made this winter were actually the continuation of a facility upgrade begun in 2007. Improved practice facilities, several new tee boxes and remodeled green complexes have been added through the last five years. There's still work being done and probably always will be given the highly commendable resolve of the membership to make Mount Kisco CC a stellar golf course.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf

How Winning Sales Arguments Lose Sales

Traditionally, sellers walk into the prospect with a presentation listing the many reasons their product should be bought. They present their case to the prospect, giving arguments and evidence much like a lawyer in a courtroom. They then listen to the opposing case (the objections from the prospect) and rebut them as best they can. The whole process becomes about winning a courtroom debate with the prospect. Sound familiar?

Now, in my limited experience in a courtroom, there are basically three parties involved in a typical case: the judge, who hands down a decision based on the merits of the arguments which are presented by the other two people, the plaintiff and the defendant. What’s different about selling is that the “judge,” or prospect, also happens to be the “opposing attorney!” He’s responsible not only for making a decision, but for arguing against it. Not that he can’t be objective, but the odds aren’t with you. That’s one reason closing ratios are typically so low for many salespeople.

But losing the case—or getting a “no” from the prospect—isn’t the toughest part. It’s the fact that once this “judge” hands down the decision, it’s pretty final. There’s not really any appeal in traditional sales and it’s pretty hard to come up with a new case and get back into the courtroom with it. You usually give all your best reasons to buy during the first presentation. To get a second chance to pitch your product, you have to first overcome the prospect’s attitude that he’s “heard it all before.” You have to offer something new to get back in the door.

When you sell ideas (solutions to the prospect's needs), though, you’ve always got a reason for the prospect to see you again—because you can always come up with a new idea. Remember that an idea isn’t a product—it’s a use, a solution to a discovered need. So, as long as you can come up with different ideas, you’ll be able to get back in to see the prospect with them. You’re not coming back to make the same old pitch; you’re offering something new.

Of course, part of your presentation includes the reasons your product will satisfy the prospect’s needs. You do need to make your arguments. But if you structure your presentation the way I suggest, the prospect will focus on the desirability of your idea instead of on the reasons for buying your product or service. Your “arguments” will go unanswered. And you’ll have the opportunity to present them again as you come back over and over again with new ideas. Same arguments every time, just new ideas to get you in the door.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

PGA Championship Competitor Talks Mental Training

Greg Bisconti has some great advice for golfers competing at all levels: practice your mental game as well as your swing. The assistant pro at St. Andrew's in Hastings has plenty of cred when it comes to tournament play. He's competed in three PGA Championships and was in the winners circle as low club pro in 2009 at Hazeltine. Last year, Bisconti won both the Westchester Open and the Metropolitan Professional Championship. I heard him speak at this year's Met PGA Spring Forum.

"There are times when your knees are shaking," Bisconti says, "and you've got to rely on your routine to enable you to play." He's a big believer in visualizing the shot you're about to hit. "Do it while the other guy is playing," he recommends.

Mental practice can take many forms. "I spent two months preparing for the first tee shot in 2006 at Hazeltine," Bisconti says. "I would visualize the crowds and try to build up the pressure internally" while playing practice rounds. He also likes to practice putts with his eyes closed to develop confidence and feel.

When you're getting ready for a big game, Bisconti says, "Keep a diary that details all of your good and bad habits before, during, and after a round of golf. Writing down these experiences will help you take ownership of what happened and help you get past any obstacles that may present themselves in the future. Look for changes in eating habits, workouts, length of preparation on game day, how you handled adversity during the round, how you performed when in contention, shot tendencies, etc."

His best advice: Every round of golf should be a learning experience.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf