How To Create Closing Strategy in Sales | Win the Sale | Professional Selling Skills Training | HRDC Claimable Malaysia

Closing the sale is not an event. It is:

• having effective prospecting skills

• having a closing awareness or attitude

• related to everything that you have done up to the final close

• based on the ability to come from the customer’s perspective

• grounded in the ability to create a high level of trust

Attempting to close a sale without all of the above criteria is to invite a “no sale” result. Most poor prospects attempt to get the salesperson to move to the close quickly and then base their decision not to buy on price or some other stall tactic that most sales- people can’t effectively handle. Therefore, the entire sales process comes down to a nickel or some differential that you can’t control.

Few salespeople have a “closing strategy”—a process that they follow with each and every  sales opportunity. They ask a few questions, jump into the presentation too soon, try to overcome any objections, and go for the close. The successful salespeople know the outcome long before they get to the end of this routine process, and they do it by ensuring that each of the above steps is in place before they ask their closing question.

People generally don’t like to make buying decisions. The primary reason is that they don’t want to make a poor or wrong decision. For years, traditional sales closing methods asked people to make a decision. For example: Do you want it in green or red? (Alternative choice close.) Do you want to use your pen or mine? (Action close.) Can we write up an order now? (Direct close.)

Each of these closing techniques, even though it can work, has two fundamental problems:

1. It asks the prospect to make a decision.

2. The average salesperson is uncomfortable using it.

Since people don’t like to make decisions, I suggest you stop asking them to.

Here is a simple close that I have been using it over years: make the buying decision for the prospect, and ask them to agree with the decision you have made. It goes like this: “Let’s do this, is that okay?” “Let’s arrange for delivery on the fifteenth, is that okay?” “Let’s get together on Thursday at 10 a.m., is that okay?”

This close works for three reasons:

1. It gets a decision made, but the prospect doesn’t feel as though they have to make it. By agreeing with you, they, in essence, do make the decision. I have found that people want to get decisions made, but don’t want to make them.

2. It is common language. I guarantee in the next two to three days you will either say to someone or hear from someone, “Let’s go to the movie, okay?” or “Let’s go out to dinner tonight, okay?”

3. It is easy to remember and use, and it gets the job done.

When you use this close, the prospect has only three options:

1. They can go along with both your decision for them and your recommendation.

2. They go along with your decision, but don’t like your recommendation. In both cases, you have a close.

3. They go along with neither your decision nor recommendation. No sale. However, using this with a qualified prospect gives you a 2-out-of-3 closing percentage.

4. If two people want to do business together, they won’t let the details get in the way. If they don’t want to do business, any detail will get in the way.

Turn It Around

Have a closing methodology that works and is repeatable.