Effortless Closing

Effortless Closing

It’s the part of the sale where your heart’s beating the fastest. You’ve had anywhere from one to three meetings with your prospect and now it comes to that defining moment: THE CLOSE! This is one area where professionals often feel the least confidence. And it’s the part of the process that also gets the most “blame” if the sale is not made.

The following are 5 tips to make your closing more effective and effortless:

1) Focus On High Quality Prospects

One reason closing may be so difficult is because you’re trying to sell to anyone who is willing to listen. You will close more sales, more often and with less effort if you focus on selling to your highest quality prospects. To do this you need to be crystal clear on who your ideal client is.

Get a clear sense of their demographic and psychographic profile, as well as the problems they have that would cause them to need your services. Then put together marketing strategies that will put you in front of them (active strategies) and will attract them to you (passive strategies).

2) Leverage Referrals

So much of selling professional services is about relationship and trust. Credibility and trust can be established almost instantly if you come to the prospect by way of a strong referral. This is a way to have others find those high quality prospects for you and pave the way for an easier close. An enthusiastic referral gives the prospect a strong reason to believe your services will work for them. As a result, you’ll run into much less resistance and objection to moving ahead with the sale.

3) Fully Assess Your Prospect’s Needs

A golden rule in sales is never close until you have fully explored the prospect’s needs. This involves asking questions that help you and the prospect understand the full extent of their problems and their desired results. This process puts you in the greatest position to offer a solution that best meets their needs. This process also enables your prospect to make the best decision for them regarding the sale. To attempt to close before you do this will virtually ensure no sale.

4) Make A Clear Invitation

If your focusing on high quality prospects, fully assessing needs and presenting a powerful solution and still not getting the sale, you may be leaving an important component out: the invitation. Many people are simply waiting for you to invite them to take the next step to move ahead with the sale. When you do this make sure you keep it simple. In other words, don’t make starting a relationship with you feel like a burden – it usually isn’t complex, yet so many professionals overwhelm their prospects with the 56 details of getting started. Then they wonder why the prospect wants to “think about it”! Of course, they want to think about it – you’ve just given them a 12-course meal to digest.

There are two important principles here: First, be sure to explicitly invite the prospect to move ahead (i.e., make a recommendation for the next step, etc.). Second, keep this simple. You’re just describing how to get started working together, not the entire relationship. Have a mental checklist of no more than 5 items that you can express in less than a minute or two. Incorporating the invitation will dramatically increase your closes.

5) Silence is Golden

This is the moment where many professionals often blow it. After you make the invitation, do the following: close your mouth and do not speak until the prospect does. At this point you’ve provided the prospect with everything they need to make their decision, now give them the space to respond to your invitation. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon that the “3 seconds of silence that feels like an eternity” will prompt you to start selling again and before you know it, you’ve just talked the prospect out of the sale.

Be comfortable with the silence and resist the temptation to fill it.

In summary, here’s a question to ponder: What would happen to your close ratios if you worked to improve each of these five areas? Try it for the next 90 days and take note of what happens.

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