Closing new business is the main objective of professional salespeople.  Everyone knows sales is a challenging career.  To outsiders who know little about sales, closing new business seems to be the hardest part- a mysterious technique that is often unsuccessful.  But believe it or not, we’ve seen that closing can be easy if you’ve paved the way with your prospect by taking the right steps.  Closing should be a natural outcome of a discussion between you and your prospect. By the time you get to the close, your prospect has reached the unavoidable conclusion that your solution is just what their business needs.  The “hard work” of sales lies in taking the right steps throughout the process that result in an easy close.

What Makes Closing Easier?

First, be sure you are addressing the real decision maker. There is nothing more frustrating than discovering that you’ve walked through an entire sales process only to find that the person you’ve developed a relationship with needs to bring in another party who will ultimately make the decision.

Confirm that your prospect’s problem can be addressed by your solution. Take time to fully understand how the problem has impacted their business, what stress it has caused, what resources it has consumed, and what they’ve already done to address it. This allows you to adjust your script to speak directly to their challenges and their experiences.

Make sure that you are getting mini ‘buy-ins’ as you are progressing through the sales process.  Do this by ensuring that this is a two-way conversation. Check for agreement at key points in the discussion.  You’ll be able to assess your prospect’s level of engagement, confirm their level of interest, and address potential objections.

Above all, throughout the engagement, never forget that “people buy from other people”. Make sure that your prospect feels good about connecting with you and is looking forward to working with you.

If you’ve taken these steps, once you are ready to close, you can simply ask: “What would you like to happen next?”

At One of a Kind Sales, we are sales experts.  We provide services that help qualify leads, improve sales performance, and close more business.  Want to learn more?  Give us a call at 908-879-2911.