Closing. Everybody wins when we match great
solutions to our prospects problems. Our goal in this module on closing is to develop a closing
strategy and game plan and ultimately build your confidence to ask for the order. Some thoughts
around successful closing include and please note some items were covered in pipeline and
prospect management. Many areas go hand in hand. Document your agenda. In a perfect world
what would happen. Understand your sales process: pipeline management. Understand their
buying process. What does that look like align your process with theirs.
Staying focused on
their needs and not yours. People mapping and customer journey mapping. Qualified leads
prospects and prospects versus suspects. Driving urgency. Your followup and follow
through. Forecasting and accurate goal setting. Everybody wins when we match great
solutions to our prospect's needs and problems. Be sure that you identify the decision maker.
Knowing the decision maker is crucial to a quick close. This should happen in discovery.
Be real. Keep it real. A client can sense if you're not being genuine during the sales
process. It's absolutely vital to maintain their trust. Create a sense of urgency. Why
you and why now.
Overcome any objections. Be ready and prepared for any objections that
might arise. Know your competition. What are all the alternatives including doing nothing.
Watch what you say. Your words really matter. I've got a few extra points as well. When
it all possible, let other people close for you. Leveraging referrals and third-party
endorsements is critical and key. If and when you're not the first choice make sure you're the
second choice. Lose gracefully and be prepared to swoop in when number one fails. Ask for feedback.
What could I have done differently to earn your business. Understand that there's a ton
of closing techniques. From the direct question close, the trial close, the one to
10 Close, impending event close, or working off of a deadline the fomo fear of missing out,
scarce close. Everybody is getting them so you better hop on now. The choice of two positives.
Would you like to get started this month or next month. The takeaway close. You know what,
now is probably not the right time for you to get started.
Those are just a number of closing
techniques I encourage you to practice and find what works best for you your style as well as
your prospects. Seek to understand the data both quantitatively, looking at close rates as well
as qualitatively asking for feedback from your prospects. Being ready for objections. Preparing for
and getting ready for objections requires you to think and plan ahead. Similar to the multiplication
tables. Practicing and committing them to memory. You should should work to understand in advance
what are the most common objections you're facing and your associated response.
Whether it's some
of the common ones. Timing, budget, competition, or some other common objection that you might face.
You should be ready and prepared. Listen seek to understand the sentiment and the true objection
and then offer a solution to the stated objection. Everyone wins negotiations. Throughout
negotiations we want all prospects to have a good experience and to feel understood,
listened to, and prioritized throughout. Although each party may be giving up something in the
form of concessions within the negotiation you ultimately want to serve your client's best
interests and needs while also not sacrificing ing your business objectives. For example
growth.
It's good to stick close to your price whenever you can. But have a couple of
levers you can use to make a deal happen. like a discount for referrals or a feature that
could be omitted to meet a price goal. And if you don't win the business, you always want to
walk away with respect and hopefully part ways in a friendly manner. Never burn a bridge as you
never know when your paths may cross again. As well as prospects talk to other prospects and
you want to safeguard your reputation in the market. Next level questions. Throughout the
sales process a true sales professional must always exhibit a polite persistence. To drive
the process forward ask questions and come to multiple agreements at as you build the
deal to make sure it makes sense to continue forward. You'll have the most success when
you engage in deep inquiry.
With questions like do they have the motivation, do they
want to change, do they acknowledge that they have a need, do they understand that need,
and want to do something about it take action. Do they trust and believe you, do they like the
terms of the agreement is there anything other than price holding them back, do they have the
power to actually make a decision and then who is the absolute decision maker here. Is Mike
Morgan sharing keys to closing a sale. Listen closely. The keys to closing a sale start before
you ever make contact with your prospect. In the very first uh you know very first engagement
engagement it's understanding what their business is about. What their business model is about. It's
understanding the person that you're going to be selling to personally what their motivations
are. Once you have a real firm understanding of what the likely needs are on the prospect
side, then the keys you know the next key to to uh successfully closing the sale is um getting
to a point where your prospect has emotionally um connected with the need.
They've admitted
that they have the need. They've admitted that the need is um you know something that they're
willing to invest time and resources to solve and if you've developed those things then you
actually have something that's closable until you have't agreed upon mutually agreed upon need
between you and the prospect that you're working on there's really no opportunity to close anything.
Another key to closing a sale is it shouldn't be an event. It should be a natural outcome to the
course of the conversations that you've had. The interactions that you've had with the prospect and
at the end of the day the key to closing a sale is connecting with with someone emotionally and and
generally there going to be two ways that you're going to need to connect with them on an emotional
level.
One is you need to help them solve a real business need that they admit that they have and
if you want to really be successful at closing sales you need to get to a point where there's
a personal motivation for them buying from you as well. The more emotionally connected they are
personally to the the thing that you're trying to solve the more likely it is that you're going
to be able to close the sale so that's really the key you know to to developing the closing process.
It's critically important that you ask and don't assume and what I mean by that is a lot
of times in sales conversations we assume the answers without actually hearing them come from
the prospect's mouth to our ears.
We project what we want them to say on to them without
actually getting confirmation that that's how they feel. So one of the core you know one of one
of the things that I think is critically important in closing the sale is getting confirmation with
your from your assumptions getting confirmation of your assumptions back from the prospect.
In other words if you think it, make sure you elicit that response and and get clarity from
the prospect because what you'll find often is they don't completely agree with you or they
don't think exactly what you think they're thinking. However when they tell you what they're
thinking you've got concrete information that you can deal with in the sales process to help
keeping the to help keep the the sales moving forward. trust and relationships.
Remember that you're the
trusted business advisor charged with getting your prospects to the best place for their business.
Do they understand the implications of not making a move or changing now? Will it be a disaster or
will they be okay? How can you help them make that best choice. By taking a proactive consultative
approach you're able to build that trust that a long-term relationship is built on. Before we
hop into our last lesson on how to close like a pro, I want you to hear again from Donald as a
leader with over 30 years of sales experience you better believe he's closed a lot of deals.
Let's hear his thoughts on what it means to be a closer. A couple of key elements to successfully
driving your deal to closure is an interesting thing that we all battle with in sales. There's
actually this phrase "always be closing" it's a bunch of crap.
You need to know the right time
to ask for the order. You need to know the right time to ask for the paperwork to be completed
and the way to think about this is not about your goals to make money for a particular
quarter but about the problem and the timing the customer custom's problem must be solved. So
that means if you need to implement a certain piece of software or technology in order for
that client to be able to fulfill orders for their customer that is their meaningful reason
to close quickly because they need to use your technology, your service, your product, to help
them do a job. Being a closer is about being other centered and giving the client the ability
to get time to value and that's what you want to talk about when you're closing business. If I'm
just trying to close you because I want to make president's club, I want to buy a beach house,
I want an extra commission customers feel that. And they feel and understand that you're not
looking out for their best interest.
Closing is about understanding the timing and tempo of
the client's need and matching that to your products and service so always be closing that's
really not true. Always be building trust and then you'll know the right time to ask for for the
order because you don't have to be slick about it. You can just ask the client how are we going
to implement this technology, this service, this product to help you win in the marketplace
and when do you need to do that to meet your goals.
Drive the close. Closing isn't what happens
at the very end of the sales process. Closing is an activity that actually happens throughout
the entire sales process. Don't be afraid to ask for their business. You've got to pop the question.
Do we have a deal every call should drive the deal towards revenue. This is called trial closing. I
would hate to oversimplify this point but many times sales professionals forget to actually
ask for the business. say what. It's a natural progression of you demonstrating value and your
ability to match your product or service with your prospect's needs, wants, desires, and challenges
to move forward and solidifying a commitment and moving forward and making the transaction
official. Signed, sealed, and delivered. Post close like a pro. After the close of course you need
to deliver what you promised, how and when you promised it.
You should also stay in contact to
make sure the solution is implemented properly including onboarding, any troubleshooting as
well as future training. When your clients are happy, they produce more good for you. Up sell and
crossell opportunities are fantastic. Once you've established an initial beach head you can now
identify opportunities to upgrade to a more robust option or sell related products and services.
The revenue produced from these moves yield high ROI for your efforts. Referrals: your satisfied
customers may connect you to other contacts with similar needs or to opportunities like speaking
engagements or other activities that put you in contact and in front of other prospects. Referrals
are the most effective way to surface prospects and expand your network after the deal is
done. It's not the end of the story it's actually the first chapter in building a strong
book of business with this customer as well as others. You have created a personal brand, as a
sales professional and trusted business advisor and solution provider. Increase your creativity
and sales effectiveness and assembled a toolkit to grow your book of business. Your value and
your reputation in the marketplace by consuming the instructional content and completing the self
assessments and exercises you now have valuable new skills and competencies including but not
limited to a confident and strategic mindset for selling strategies for spending your time and your
prospect's time wisely.
Planning methodologies for every phase of the sales process, best practices
for prospecting, mining for gold, a proven approach to assess and address your prospect's needs, tips
for demonstrating your value, tactics to manage your funnel and move deals forward in the sales
process, and the confidence to ask for and win the business. Congratulations you've now completed
sales 101 the basics! You're ready to go to market and start serving your clients and
your prospects. I'm super excited and just honored to have led you along this
journey and I thank you for trusting us with your profess development. Wishing
you all the best and we'll see you soon!.
