To be brilliant in the basics of selling, salespeople must practice, drill and rehearse sound selling tactics. Go over these ten bullet points at your next sales meeting. They are not new but are often forgotten with missed sales as the result. By keeping these points at the forefront of your team’s mind you hone the edge they need to sell more starting today.
1. Closing a sale does not start when it’s time to work figures out with your customer. In fact, by then the sale has already been set up for better or worse. Everything a salesperson does, will either have a positive or negative affect on the sale from the moment they meet the prospect. The whole process and experience influences if a customer get’s closed.
Learning 30 fancy closing scripts will not bail you out of making a bad first impression, failing to build rapport, giving a sloppy presentation and demonstration or focusing on the wrong buying motives.
2. The more time you spend following the steps to the sale the less time you have to spend closing the deal. On the other hand, the less time you spend following the sales process, the more time it takes to close the deal. And remember, the longer the deal drags on, the less profitable it becomes. You get to choose where you spend your time: on the steps to the sale or in the closing booth. Make sure you make the right choice.
3. You need allies in the sales process, not enemies. Thus, right from the start, acknowledge and give respect to everyone in the buying party: spouses, children, friends, etc.
4. Prospects must buy you before they buy into what you’re selling. They must buy into your character and competence. In other words, they’re asking themselves, “Can I trust you” and “Do you know what you’re talking about.” You can’t take buy-in for granted. You must earn it.
5. Before you present a product, make certain you understand the prospect’s buying motives, or hot buttons. Otherwise you’ll never gain any momentum during the presentation. Every time you talk about something the prospect is interested in you move him or her closer to the sale and every time you mention something they’re indifferent to you push them farther away.
Remember, when you talk about their hot buttons you raise the value of the product but when you ramble on about features they could care less about you only raise the price. Your presentation will have substantial influence on how much the prospect is willing to pay for the product when you are closing the deal.
6. If you don’t get the prospect involved with the product with a quality demonstration you will not trigger their emotions and without emotional involvement, you will have to close the deal based strictly on logic-which means you’ll have to make it cheap enough for the prospect to take it.
You must get a prospect’s emotions involved in order to set up a more enjoyable and profitable close.
7. When closing the deal, never ask a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ closing question because the customer has a 50/50 chance of saying ‘no’. Instead, ask an either-or closing question because this type of question doesn’t ask if a customer wants to own your product. It asks instead, how they’d like to own it.
8. When asking a closing question or presenting figures to a prospect, do so with confidence. Don’t change your tone, pace or get choked up. Be natural and ask as though you expect them to buy. If you did your job throughout the sales process, you’ve earned the right to ask with confidence and conviction.
9. Don’t be afraid to ask closing questions because when you do, nothing bad will happen. The customer will either buy your product or give you an objection. With a solid objection, you move closer to the sale because an objection says, ‘I’m interested.’ Once you have an objection, you have something to work with. The most frustrating prospects are those that don’t give you an objection. Suffice to say that the more closing questions you ask, the more sales you’ll make.
10. Rejection is part of sales and if you can’t handle it you chose a strange way to make a living. You never have to learn to like it, but you can’t let it shut you down, either. Rejection means you are at least doing something. Sales people that don’t get rejected never lay it on the line and ask for the sale. They add value to nothing, contribute nothing and in the world of sales, are nothing