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DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE REAL ART OF ‘CLOSING-A-SALE’ IS?

Written by: Billy Sharma

Article Overview: I LEARNED A GREAT LESSON FROM SOME PROS. ON THE REAL ART OF 'CLOSING A SALE'.

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DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE REAL ART OF ‘CLOSING-A-SALE’ IS?

Ask any salesperson, "At what point in the selling process does the 'Close' take place?"

Eight out of ten will answer - at the end. To be fair, they are not totally incorrect but they are more wrong than right.

The actual ‘close of the sale’ takes place almost at the initial meeting and all through the interaction.

Dale Carnegie is best known as the architect of the ‘Five Steps to a Sale’ selling process and his success is largely due to the simplicity of his strategy.

He gave short, easy, clearly defined rules that are based on human psychology,

For instance, his first step is: “Talk to your customer briefly regarding something that interests them.”

What does he mean and why is this important?

When salespeople meet customers for the first time, they need to ‘get-to-know-them’. This is also called bonding.

Carnegie suggested: in your opening meeting with customers, the best way to get them to like you and trust you is to engage them in brief conversations about things they find most interesting.

I saw this beautifully demonstrated first hand, when I was hired by the US agency, Response Marketing Group of Virginia, to set up their operation in Toronto. They had been invited to come and pitch for the CIBC Credit card business.

After the initial formalities and introductions, the CIBC staff sat back and waited for us to show and sell them.

After a brief awkward silence, our main salesman, Jim Marous, simply said, “Oh, we came here today just to get to know you. We don’t even know what problem needs to be solved or what you have attempted in the past.”

For the next two hours the client spilled their guts, revealing in detail their problems and what needed to be fixed.

I felt that I had just witnessed a skillful doctor who explored carefully before giving a diagnosis

A week later we came fully prepared with our pitch and solutions and walked away with 2 million dollars of business that day.

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Home > Marketing > Billy Sharma > DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE REAL ART OF CLOSINGASALE IS
Article Tags: architect, awkward silence, cibc, conversations, credit card business, dale carnegie, diagnosis, doctor who, five steps, formalities, guts, human psychology, interaction, introductions, jim marous, response marketing group, rsquo, salespeople, salesperson, simplicity

About the Author: Billy Sharma
RSS for Billy's articles - Visit Billy's website

BILLY SHARMA Billy holds a Bachelor of Science degree and is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of J.J. School of Art (Bombay) and the Hochshüle für Gestaltung (Bauhaus School of Design, Germany). After many years of working for other companies, Billy founded Designers Inc. In 1999 he became Managing Director and Creative Director of Brann Worldwide in Toronto. Under his stewardship the agency grew three-fold in two years when Brann Worldwide was elected the number one direct marketing agency in the world in 2000. Billy has extensive advertising and direct marketing experience gained in many national and international advertising agencies in Europe, U.S. and Canada. This has honed his creative skills to help provide breakthrough creative ideas for his clients.

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TO CREATE INTEREST IN YOUR DIRECT MAIL PACKAGE YOU HAVE TO START FROM THE START


Related Forum Posts
Re: Poll: Print News vs. Internet News Re: Poll: Print News vs. Internet News - Interesting topic, GT. When I was working, one of my fellow co-workers always bought the local paper. When there was downtime and I wasn't doing anything (which happened quite frequently) I would read it. There were certain sections that I couldn't miss, including the comics section. I was addicted to say the least, and what else is there to do when you don't have any work? Now, I don't read the paper at all as we don't buy it. I do sometimes read it online, but there's a lot missing compared to the print version, including my favorite sections. Any other news I read about is online, usually just browsing through MSN's home page. I don't watch the news on TV, as the media is so biased and can't even show the REAL news.


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