Every dedicated sports fan can name a referee's decision that did not go their way. In some cases, they will insist that even the best high-resolution, slow-motion video evidence was not definitive. So how do professional referees succeed in making high-pressure judgment calls with reasonable accuracy? After all, the pressure on them to ‘get it right’ in the moment is immense.

Bill Belichick, who has won a record six Super Bowls as head coach of the NFL's New England Patriots, once praised the officials’ decision-making skills: ‘There's no doubt those guys – all of the officials – they have such a hard job to do. I know we look at the replays and analyse them millisecond by millisecond and everybody has all of the answers on what it should be and what it shouldn't be. These guys are out there trying to do it live and at full speed. They make so many amazingly good calls and some of the plays are just so close that it's less than an inch or … not even a split-second.’¹

What applies to American football also applies to soccer, the sport also more commonly known as football. Let's go back to an event that caused an international controversy in June 2004. The scene was the quarter-finals of the European Championship. With one minute left in regulation, soccer powerhouses England and Portugal stood deadlocked at 1–1 in a tense, winner-take-all match in Lisbon. Urs Meier, a world-class referee from Switzerland, awarded England a free kick in Portuguese territory.

True to his legendary reputation, David Beckham bent the ball into the box, and within the blink of an eye, England's Sol Campbell put the ball in the back of the net.² This last-minute goal gave England a stunning 2–1 victory and sent them to the semi-finals.

Or did it?

What transpired on that play is situational awareness at its finest. Meier needed to make a decision in the heat of the moment. Compounding that pressure were the deafening sounds of tens of thousands of screaming fans in the stadium, the invisible eyes of countless millions more watching on television, and perhaps even the excruciating never-ending scrutiny of history.³

He blew his whistle: No goal! He indicated that England had committed a foul and awarded Portugal a free kick.

Within a matter of hours, that fateful decision earned Meier the reputation as ‘the most vilified man in football’.⁴ He reportedly received 16,000 hate emails, 5,000 abusive phone calls, and even death threats. The UK retail chain Asda seemed somewhat sympathetic, but in a sarcastic way. It supposedly offered all Swiss nationals a free eye exam at one of its 68 optical centres.⁵

To this day Meier not only stands by that decision, but also by the process that led to it. What is even more amazing – until you understand his explanation – is that Meier never even saw the foul that led him to nullify the goal!

As he described in his book DU Bist Die Entscheidung [English: YOU Are the Decision],⁶ Meier sensed something was odd the moment the ball went into the net. He claimed that his gut and his entire body gave him the signal, triggered by a small inconsistency that fans sitting in the stadium or watching on TV probably would never have noticed. Meier observed that England forward John Terry did not behave the way one would expect in the immediate aftermath of such an important goal. Instead of looking at his teammates to celebrate, Terry looked directly at Meier. That one instant of eye contact told the experienced referee all he needed to know. Terry had committed a foul. It turns out that he had hindered the Portuguese goalkeeper. Video replay ultimately showed that Meier's ‘blind’ intuitive call was indeed correct.

Meier's example from the 2004 England–Portugal match is an inspiring and instructive example of situational awareness: detecting slight deviations between a person's behaviour and what the rest of a scene presupposes that we should see instead. Meier pre-consciously knew what to look for without any interference, forethought, or second-guessing from his conscious mind. When he is confronted with ambiguous or unclear situations, Meier bases his decisions on that kind of intuition, which is now a best practice among many professional sports officials.

Making such intuitive snap judgments correctly is an important part of playing the Invisible Game successfully. The parties in sales negotiations often face similar situations, but there are some major differences between a sales negotiation and other high-pressure events such as championship sports, and not all of them work to a salesperson's advantage.

First, in a negotiation, you don't have the luxury of freezing the action to go to a more objective source, such as video replay, then spend a couple of minutes trying to understand whether you made the right decision. Rarely do you have the chance for a ‘do over’ if you see that you have made mistake or a misjudgment.

The second major difference is that referees are supposed to be neutral. Their decisions could go in favour of either party, ostensibly without bias. In business negotiations, there is no third party to catch infractions by the other side. You are one of the players and have to work on your own to steer the outcome in your favour.

The third difference is how the implicit ‘rules of the game’ have evolved, particularly the level of uncertainty around what rules to enforce. When Meier walked onto the pitch during his long career, he didn't have any idea what would transpire, but he did have some well-established constants to work with. The most basic rules of soccer are fixed and clear. At the start of the match, there were always 11 active players per side, fighting over one ball. The length and width of the field may vary from stadium to stadium, but the goals, the penalty areas, and the goal boxes always had the same strict and familiar dimensions. If only the same kinds of fixed and clear rules applied to the playing field and the teams in a sales negotiation!

These three important differences – no pause button, no impartial referee, and no fixed rules – leave many questions unanswered. What can salespeople latch onto for reliable orientation in order to gain and maintain leverage in their negotiations under uncertain and volatile conditions? Where can they find a source of stability or some semblance of consistency? Beyond that, there are important questions about the intuitive processes that Meier and others rely on when they make snap judgments or split-second decisions. What really drives this intuition? Furthermore, as a salesperson, how can you learn to harness those same forces to elevate your selling performance from good to excellent, make it stick, and make excellent performance second nature?