I had the privilege of taking a Sales course with Mr. Kocur in the Fall. The whole course talked about closing and what exactly is it. Professor Sweet was talking about ABC or “Always Be Closing” which reminded me of something I learned from his class. We defined closing as, “a question or action taken by a salesperson designed to elicit a positive buying decision from the prospect.” There were three perspectives that came from this.
Closing should be:
1. Natural
2. Planned like the rest of the sales process
3. Aligned to the prospects needs
Closing is such an important part of the process and you can’t be timid and not ask that trial close or closing question. An article from Entrepreneur talking about “The 10 Biggest Mistakes in Sales” reinforces that idea. There were three points from this article that I believe have great application to this topic of closing.
1. Not asking hard questions
The author talks about how he believes that sales people miss opportunities to build trust by not asking hard questions. He suggested asking questions like: how do you feel about our price?, How do you feel about our team, etc. Without asking these tough questions, salespeople are beating around the bush and not asking these vital question. I believe some salespeople including myself have fear of asking the tough questions because we don’t know how they will react.
2. Presenting without the intention to close.
The author suggests that every time he meets with the prospect he tells them that his product will be in their building in a week. Usually the prospect rebuttals him but he laid out his intention. Now when I first read this I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure if I agreed necessarily. I thought this could come off as arrogance but I understand that you have to be confident. If your not confident about your product then the customer might have doubts about your product. The prospect needs to know that you are an a expert in your product.
3. Not asking for the close early enough.
The author noticed that his sales team was presenting long to the buyer and he could tell that the buyer had enough. He made the suggestion that at the end of every stage of the presentation, that the sales team ask the prospect, “have you seen enough information to make a decision?” They found that it resulted in the buyer closing 80% faster when using this technique. I believe that a lot of salespeople have a shyness when it comes down to the close. The don’t want to ask about the close because they are afraid that if they do they might ask them a question they don’t know or just plainly say I’m not interested. What we forget is that those who ask questions are much more likely to buy because there interested. They wouldn’t ask if they weren’t interested.
BoweryJE22
This post was very interesting. I appreciated the 3 points at the end. Selling seems to be something that you learn over time and can always improve upon. Those three points were things that even experienced sales people could learn from. I found the stats about closing 80% faster to be particularly interesting as all that was required was a simple phrase. Its amazing what simple actions and statements can do for the sales process.