Your Closing Motto (and Approach) Needs an Upgrade

“Always be closing!” Any avid sales professional likely has had this mantra playing in his head at some point, thanks to the oh-so-famous scene in “Glengarry Glen Ross.” But the concept of “always be closing” (A.B.C.) is dead in today’s world!

There are infinite closing techniques that have been taught over the years. As a buyer, most leave you with a ‘slimy’ impression of the salesperson, or make you feel unduly pressured or manipulated to say “yes.”

Here are just a few of the most common approaches to closing a sale:

• The alternate choice close
• Ben Franklin close
• Puppy dog close
• Impending event close
• Tea pot close
• The god close

But I’m here to let you in on a secret (the truth): There is only one real closing technique that tests the entire sales process. It revolves around asking this simple question:

“Mr. or Mrs. Prospect, what do we do next?”

Most sales coaches and leaders will advise you to handle objections in order to close a deal, because that shows you the prospect is thinking hard about buying your product/service. But if I asked 100 salespeople what is actually going on, 75 percent would admit that prospects are often just trying to get rid of you or trying not to buy anything. If you asked a psychologist, they would call that an argument.

If you are at the end of the entire sales process, and have done what you were supposed to do, the prospect should never feel pressure. The outcome is automatically a, “yes, let’s go ahead” or, “no, this isn’t the right solution.”

Think about it from the close, and work backward in time:

• The client agreed that it was time to make the decision, and knew you wouldn’t put pressure on him with either outcome.
• You have proven (via a proposal, demo and presentation) that you can fix his problem, for the budget you and he mutually declared after going through the decision-making gauntlet.
• You discovered, with each team member:
  • The problem that needs to get fixed
  • The reasons and justifications that got them into this problem and how long it has been a problem
  • You quantified the impact of the problem on the players of the team (directly and indirectly)
  • You had them declare what the compelling reason is that this needs to be FIXED NOW!
  • You understand how much the prospect would invest to fix the problem
  • You’ve learned what and who could stop it from being fixed, and who needs to approve any actions decided upon.

Some sales cycles are more complex than others; I’m not talking about selling toilet paper or things off a website. But when it comes to hand-to-hand, belly-to-belly selling that needs to be understood by a “trusted advisor” or “strategic partner” (separate selling approaches), this is the only close that will work.

You don’t always need to be closing. Instead, you should always be ASKING… where the prospect wants to go from here, given all the information you’ve delivered.