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Guest post by: Casey Gollan Become an Author

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Too many small business people lose thousands of dollars in sales and profitable growth each and every month because of one simple mistake.

They don’t ask the customer to buy!

And it can hurt your sales and your small business growth if you’re a business owner, or it can impede your sales success if you’re a salesperson.

So let me ask you this question.

In your own experience as a customer, have you ever been served by a salesperson to the point where you’re saying to yourself, “okay I want to buy this now!”… And the salesperson either leaves you, keeps talking or just forgets to ask you to buy?

It’s a little uncomfortable isn’t it?

It happens all the time.

Too many salespeople forget to ask the customer to buy. They may be scared of getting a ‘no’, scared of feeling ‘pushy’ or many other various reasons.

Whatever the case, here are some tips on how you can ask for, and get, more sales and have the customer love you for it in the process.

Read the buying signals from the customer.
If they are interested in you and they have listened to you present your products or services, they’ll be waiting for you to lead them to purchase.

The fact is this; if your customer is still talking to you at the end of your sales presentation they are ready to buy from you! You just need to lead them in what they need to do to buy from you.

It’s natural. They’re talking to you because they have a ‘problem’ that they need fixed, and you have a solution. Most often if they’re still engaging you in conversation they want to buy it from you. So ask them to!

However, you must have ‘skill’ in asking for the sale.

Which, without adequate sales training, many people haven’t learnt the ‘closing’ skills of what to ask, when to ask and how to ask for a sale.

In summary you ask people to buy from you by asking them an involvement question that doesn’t allow them to say ‘NO’.

An involvement question should get the customer opening up to the question you just asked rather than just saying a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

An involvement question I use is this;

“Okay (name), based on what you were wanting in a [product] – how does this fit with what you had in mind?”

If they say ‘it fits perfectly!’ you can go straight to… “Okay, which credit card will it be easiest to process that on…”

When they answer that question they have bought from you.

And when you practice the above questions, and use it in your sales you’ll be amazed at how easily and quickly it happens.

The good part about an involvement question is that it still allows you to find out what they don’t like about your product/service so that you can adjust your offer to suit the customer.

For example, if your customer says “No it isn’t perfect”. You can then ask some more questions to help you find out what isn’t perfect for them, so you can change it if needed.

You can pinpoint what they don’t like by asking…

“Okay, that’s fine, what do we have to work on to make it fit with what you had in mind?”

However, this rarely gets asked if you follow a good sales script from start to end.

This article is focused on ‘asking for the sale’ for those sales people that for some reason; shy away from asking people to buy.

By using the method described you’ll make the people that want to buy a lot happier sooner because you’re leading them towards doing something that they want to do.

Buying from you!

Get commitment at the end of your sales presentations, and you’ll make heaps more happy customers and in the process get heaps of business growth.



Copyright © 2005 by Casey Gollan. All Rights Reserved

Business Coaching expert Casey Gollan helps grow businesses by $1 million to $10 million in 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 his coaching programs have added over $375 million to small businesses. Go to his Melbourne Business Coaching website and watch a free business growth video series.
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