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Close More Sales

Guest post by: Tony Cole

Article Overview: As sales people, we would all like to close more business, more quickly, at higher margins. Unfortunately, we often do our closing activities at the final presentation and are met with put-offs or think-it-overs. If we find that we are running into stalls and objections after we’ve presented, we must recognize that we have laid inadequate ground work. In other words, it’s not the closing that is the problem. It is the opening and the process that followed.

Close More Sales



There are two very important sales strategies that, when executed consistently, will prepare you to close more business, more quickly, at higher margins. These two strategies are the pre-call strategy session and the post-call debrief.

The pre-call strategy session consists of the following four steps:

1. Know what questions you will ask and anticipate responses. Your questions must be designed to get the prospect to verbalize their compelling reasons for meeting with you relative to their problem or, as we call it, severe mental anguish (SMA). Additionally, you must ask all of the pertinent questions about their current provider (your competitor), the capacity for change in the organization (time, money and resources) and the decision making process. Those questions and their related answers will enable you to disqualify the prospect early in the process and eliminate stalls and objections at the closing.
2. Anticipate what questions the prospect will ask and practice your responses.Your responses should often be clarifying questions that will help you understand completely what is underneath the prospect's question.
3. Anticipate "curve balls" that the prospect may throw you. For example, you may find out, at the final presentation that the decision maker is not going to be present. What will you do? You must anticipate and prepare.
4. Role-play the call. Decide, as a general practice, that any sales opportunity exceeding a certain dollar amount will be subject to intense role play and strategy development prior to it. Role-play with a peer or your manager.

If you are a new sales person, you may not have a problem with implementing this pre-call process. However, if you are an experienced sales person, it is easy to feel like you are beyond this rehearsal process because you've been selling for so long that you "know what will happen". I challenge you to think about all professional athletes or musicians who practice for hours each day and rehearse for each and every competition or performance. I hope you will adopt the mantra "Perfect practice makes perfect performance" and become a true professional salesperson.

The post-call debrief is just as important as the pre-call strategy but unfortunately, it is the step most sales people skip. Commit to yourself that you will complete a post-call debrief after each significant call. As you debrief after a call, here are three areas that you will want to focus on:

1. Does the prospect qualify to do business with you and your company? This is not a question that many salespeople ask themselves, but it is a critical question if you do not want to spend your valuable time with tire-kickers and those who are gathering information for a "someday" purchase. If the prospect does not fit your target client profile or if they have not expressed enough SMA to make a change, or if they do not have time, money or resources, dis-qualify them and move on.
2. Based on the information that you have collected on each call, determine what problems the prospect has and what action steps you will take to provide a solution. Determine what resources you will need to solve the prospect's problems within the allotted budget in the time frame outlined. You will note that this requires that you ask essential questions during the call to provide you with that level of intelligence.
3. Complete the post-call checklist including the identification of compelling SMA, the capacity to invest time, money and resources to fix the SMA and the clarity around the commitment to make a decision and a change. From this checklist, you will be able to assess gaps in information and your likelihood of closing the business.

Here is my challenge to you. Incorporate these two disciplined strategy steps into your next ten calls. Document what happens during and after your calls. If this process does not increase your ability to close more business, more quickly at higher margins, contact me. I will offer you one free hour of coaching.

Now how can you beat that deal?

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Article Tags: close more sales, Precall, sales people, sales plan



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