The most fun part of any sales process is coming down to the close. It’s a little emotional if you ask me: you’re going to ask them to part with their money to buy your solution. A lot of people get nervous there because they know it’s almost a do or die situation at that point. In their minds they’re organizing their thoughts and probably going over what they have to say. Something like, I’m going to tell them sheepishly you know, “It’s going to be $20,000! That’s not too much is it? Right? That’s affordable! Isn’t it?” Wrong! Of course people are going to say No! Straight away.
If you’re selling at that point and you’re going for the close, let me tell you this: you’re closing at the wrong spot! What you need to do is revisit and gather everything you know about that interaction since you first met them. At the beginning of that conversation when you were in their office and building that rapport case, you were re figuring out what’s going on for them. You’re figuring out their problems and their financial impact. What you’re analyzing at that point is their core problem area. You’d be looking at lots of pain at their end and a lot of cash that they’re wasting, since they’re losing opportunities.
Next step is that you tie to emotions: Ask them what the emotional impact is for them. They’re most likely to tell you that it’s a problem that makes them stay up at night trying to figure out a solution. So you ask them about how their boss feels when these problems keep on happening and they’ve been happening for two to three years, what’s he thinking? He’s probably thinking that he should replace the guy. So you get that kind of emotional pain alongside of the financial pain happening at the beginning of the conversation. There’s a huge waste of money and massive amounts of lost opportunity. There’s a lot of emotional impact on the person and there is likelihood that they could be fired?!
At the end, when you get down to the close of the sale, you’re not closing you’re recapping. You’re saying something like, “I took some notes during our presentation and you told me that not having the right solution you guys are wasting a $150,000 a year. And if you guys could be more efficient with this solution, you guys could be, maybe adding another $300,000 to your bottom line so that’s $450,000 and it’s also causing you sleepless nights and lots of anxiety for you and your team and the CEO is getting really upset and even might start firing people. Have I got that right?” And guess what, they’ll be like, “Hell yeah you got that right!”
“So our solution offers that $20,000 will make all that bad stuff literally evaporate and it’s going to make you look like a hero. So when would you like to start?”
Isn’t it much easier when you do all the hard work way at the beginning, do your homework in your mind before stepping into the closing and the customer that told you what the problem was, so you don’t have to arm twist them at the end, that’s when the sales just naturally happens. That’s how you close a great business deal!
