Why Are My Salespeople Struggling to Close Deals?

Ah, the old 30-second sales close.

No one likes to hang around any longer than they need to – get in there, get the business and get out!

At the beginning of most of my business development masterclasses a large percentage of delegates tell me they want to get better at closing.

They want the trick. The secret words. The magic formula. The one that will move the prospects hand towards the pen and close the deal.

So I thought I’d share it with you.

There’s a little bit of preparatory ground work, but on the whole this should work for you in around 50 – 75% of all real life sales situations.

First things first – you’ve got to Earn the Right to sell to them.

They don’t know you, they don’t trust you – they believe that all sales people are there to rip them off.

They think that you only have your own interests at heart and that your priorities and objectives will over-ride any empathy or concern with regards to their actual problems.

You must enter this situation wanting to genuinely help these people with the product or service that you believe will solve a problem for them.

You have to present yourself in a professional manner, as the expert in the room you must instil enough confidence for them to go with your final recommendation.

That will come primarily from their first impressions, your overall appearance and mannerisms, how you conduct yourself in the meeting, your preparation and eventual presentation.

But the work you did up until that point – how you reached out, how they found you, why they’re agreeing to a meeting in the first place – all those things are actually even more important than what you do next.

But – once you have established a genuine and sincere rapport with your prospects and have earned the right to have the conversation, you can move on.

The next thing to do is to Ask the Appropriate Questions.

Being able to understand a situation well enough to present a solution needs a good set of questioning skills and the equally important ability to listen to the answers.

You should ask questions that enable the customer to get everything off their chest, while telling you what you need to know.

Once you understand that well enough – to the satisfaction of the prospect – you can move on to the next bit.

Now that you fully understand the situation and know what it is that you have within your portfolio that will be truly beneficial to the customer, you present it professionally and effectively and Solve the Problem.

This is where you need to be the expert in the room – explain everything that the customer needs to achieve a positive outcome, match this to their budget and expectations and present the solution.

Sure, you’ll get what most people call objections – but if you reframe those as customer concerns you can respond to them appropriately and continue doing your best to help.

And now you are ready to “Execute the Solution”.

Just as long as you have;

• Earned the right to be viewed as THE trusted professional within your industry
• Identified and empathised with the prospect’s problems and issues relating to your product or service
• Matched and presented a suitable solution to the problem; taking into consideration budget, time frame and levels of expectation
• Put the prospect’s mind at ease with regard to all objections and concerns

So you can take the next 30 Seconds to close the sale!

All you do now is review all the major points to make sure that you and your customer are still on the same page (which will take around 28 seconds) and then ask an openly phrased closing question (about 2 seconds), such as;

“So when would you like it?”

“How many are you going to need?”

“What colour would you like?”

“How would you like to pay?”

Actually – if you do a really good job of helping them make a great buying decision – they might even close themselves.

You see a farmer’s work isn’t confined simply to harvest time and an Olympic sprinter doesn’t simply turn up to a 10 second race.

Farmer, sprinter or salesperson the rewards you reap depend upon the amount of intelligent effort put in hours, days, months (and sometimes years) beforehand.

Closing in 30 seconds is a piece of cake – but being ready to do so, is a whole different bag of tricks.

To your success,

Chris Murray