Front Office Box

The phrase “close the deal” took on whole new relevance during the Presidential campaign last year. This year the UK have media have picked up the phrase and keep suggesting the Conservative Party hasn’t yet won the argument.

But guys like us use the phrase in it’s traditional sense – Asking for the Order . So how, and when, do you close deals?

Sales is full of macho concepts like “cold calling”, “door stepping”, “pitching”, “punters” and “closing” – none of which attribute much intelligence to the customer. Of these “closing” is probably the one with the most mythology around it.

I’ll be honest first. Having been selling stuff for more than thirty years, and some of it very expensive, I still find the thought of a flat out “will you give me an order” intimidating.

In my case that’s less because I’m scared to ask the question. More like I’m scared I’ve missed a trick somewhere along the way. And of course right there, at the death, all my cost of sale has been spent. It’s hero or zero time, and we’d all rather have a live prospect than go door knocking again. A long time ago I figured the best, and easiest, time to close any deal is as early in the sales process as possible.

Closing early requires some techniques we’ll explain in a minute, but first we need to understand why “early” is better.

1. It changes the point of power in the conversation. The customer wants to get all the facts, make a decision and then hold back the order for negotiation. We need to rebalance the point of power, by changing the rules.
2. The longer the sale goes on the more cost of sale we have invested, and therefore the more we have to lose.
3. Closing the deal reveals any weaknesses in our case, and doing it early gives us a chance to fix them.
4. The customer might actually agree, in which case we all save a bunch of time.

So closing early isn’t macho, it’s common sense.

But we can’t walk in off the street and ask “give me the order”. That would be too aggressive (for me at least). In which case we need to cloak our close in terms which allow the customer to feel as if he/she has a way out.

My favourite techniques are:

* The Assumptive Close – where we act as if we’re assuming we’ll win the order.
* The Trial Balloon – where we float a seemingly innocuous hypothetical proposition.
* The Conditional Close – where we offer a deal based on the customer doing something.

There are times when these just don’t work. If our prospect genuinely isn’t the decision maker, and we can’t talk to the person who is, then we can bring out the:

* Coach Close – where we commit the prospect to helping us get it right for the boss.

And when we can be really imaginative, we can roll out the secret weapon, the :

* Reverse Coach Close – whereby we help the prospect get the best deal out of our boss – the Bad Guy in Back.

We’ll discuss each of these in later posts, with examples of where each might be suitable.

In the meantime – do you prefer early or late closes, and which techniques are your favourites?

October 8th, 2009 - Posted in Sales Coach  |  Add a Comment