Everything Is About the Close

While thinking about ways to segment training on specific subjects, I realized that it is nearly impossible to segment closing skills by themselves.  Reaching decision makers, listening skills, overcoming objections: all of these can be taught as single subject programs. Closing, on the other hand, permeates the entire presentation.  

To close effectively, you must focus on your goals from the beginning of the sales presentation. I’m not a big fan of gimmicky techniques as closing questions. Neil Rackham in "Spin Selling" comes down hard on those who practice "ABC" - Always Be Closing. I tend to agree with him that hard closes throughout a presentation don't always work. I do believe that the idea is sound, it's just usually not carried out effectively. 

I find closes to be more effective when they are a natural process at the end of your presentation. In effect, I’m asking “what’s next?”

One of the best ways to incorporate closing into a presentation is to create a dialogue with the other party. By asking about wants and needs from the opening of the conversation, you are able to tailor your offer to these needs. You show a prospective customer that your products or services fit.

After you've made your offer and you are given an objection, don't think the objection is a negative. On the contrary, you now have more information to help you close. As you resolve it, you may want to ask “How does this sound to you?”, “Does that make sense?” “Am I on the right track?”’. These are response checks which allow us to discover how much in sync we are with the prospective customer.  If we find we are in sync, we can proceed to ask for an agreement.  My favorite way of beginning this conversation is to ask: “What’s our next step?”

Notice I speak of beginning a conversation.  Even though we are at the closing stages of the sale, we must continue to have conversation in order to come to the specific agreement.  I’ve asked for their input and if I’ve taken care of all the concerns along the way, they will either write me a check (it’s happened!), tell me when they want to begin or ask a question with a strong buying signal that lets me take charge of the conversation and suggestion solutions. I always assume at this point that I have the sale and that we are just hammering out the details.

But I can’t have the conversation, if I haven’t taken the time to learn pertinent information about a customer throughout the sales presentation.  Everything IS about the close.