Running a sales call is very much like being an actor in a play or a movie scene. As a sales person, you have a role that you are playing, and you must be a master at your role. As a sales person, you must be “on” at all times. Your customers are like your audience and you are performing for them. The main difference between acting in a play and running your sales call is that in your sales call, your audience is also the person who you are acting out your scene with. In this situation, your script is you sales model and you are performing your sales call for your client.
Often times, we do not think of ourselves in this way, and it may be killing us. Prior to walking into a selling situation, have we mastered our role? Have we put in the rehearsal time necessary to be as successful as we can be? Do we lose ourselves in our role and forget everything else that may be going on around us? I know from personal experience, that the answers to at least one of these questions, if not all, is NO! We walk into selling situations when we have not yet mastered our role and we are not prepared. Could you imagine if you went to a Broadway play and the actors had not mastered their roles? What type of catastrophic disaster would that be? Would you go see that play again or refer that play to others? My guess is no, just as your customers feel when you do not master your role.
I once heard that Daniel Day Lewis walked around as Abe Lincoln in his every day life for two months prior to the filming of the movie, Lincoln, just so he could get lost in his role, and master his role. How many of us take our role that seriously? This is our livelihood! Not mastering our roles comes at great costs. 
My plea to you is that you get as serious as Daniel Day Lewis did and go out and master your role. Stop “winging it”. Practice, rehearse, take things seriously, and get lost in your role and see where it takes you!
-The Sales Leader
The Sales Leader 