Set The Stage Before Closing The Sale

Closing is a process, not an event and before you start scrambling around looking for those magical words or phrases that will close the sale it's important to make sure you've set a stage that will lead to a successful outcome. The following five steps are basic, but often overlooked by even the most seasoned salespeople. Put first things first and make sure you're building your closing foundation on rock and not on sand.

Establish The Buying Criteria. Make sure you understand completely what your prospects want and what their conditions of satisfaction are. Unless you clearly understand their wants, needs and desires you'll never produce enough urgency or eagerness to bring the sales call to a positive conclusion. An effective way to accomplish this is by asking open-ended throughout the investigating stage. Don't assume and don't guess. If you investigate needs well, you can tailor a brilliant presentation and closing becomes more or less a formality once this is done.

Offer A Realistic Solution. You'll never get this right unless you determine the conditions of satisfaction set out in step one. Remember that all prospects have two major buying motivators: desire for gain and fear of loss. The fear of loss is always a greater motivator than desire for gain, but If you can address both of these in your solution you'll double your chances of winning the sale. Here’s an example of how you might accomplish that: "These new windows will provide the comfort, convenience, and piece of mind you deserve while saving you money on the cost of heating and cooling your home instead of continuing to waste money on the widows you now have."

Justify The Price. Until you've built enough value in the product/service to equal or exceed the cost you won't make the sale. To do this you'll need to sell the benefits-not just the features-your prospect cares about because until you explain how this meets their needs and addresses the things they care about (not the things you like about it) they'll keep looking.

Create Urgency. If you follow the first three steps this one will be easier. You have to get prospects emotionally involved in order to create urgency. Selling on logic over emotion turns buyers into shoppers. Remember it's much easier for buyers to maintain the status quo than to make a change so you had better get urgency in your corner to make the pain of change easier for the prospect.

Ask For The Order. Many salespeople do all four steps and then waltz around the closing process rather than ask for a definite buying commitment. It's true, if you don't ask for the order people can't say 'no' but they can't say 'yes', either. Once you've properly completed the four steps you will have then earned the right to ask for the order; in fact, your customers will expect it. Ask with confidence and remember that if they say 'no', this simply means 'tell me more, I’m not going to give you my big stack of money for your little stack of value.'

Setting the stage for closing the sale is an investment. And the more you invest in the first four steps the easier it will be on you to complete the fifth one. Shortcut any of the four and you turn the final step into agony.