3 Tactics Of The Sales Professional That Generate More Sales And A Higher Close Rate

In this article I want to talk about closing sales. I’ve heard that a lot of people follow a very specific structure when they make a sales call. Step one, step two, step three, and so on. What I’ve seen is that when they talk about sales, they break it up into many different pieces.

This works and it’s a good way to learn sales. However, if you want to develop the correct mindset and get to an advanced level of selling, you need to change the way you think about making a sale. What I do is that I tend to look at the entire sale as being a close. In fact, every single step of the sales process is just a way for me to get to the close. I never feel like I’m at a different stage in the sale, it always just feels like I’m in a stage of closing the sale and getting the money from the client.

What happens if you look at it as “Oh my god, I’m going to go for the close! It’s almost there and it’s going to be the big finale” is that you psyche yourself out. You end up getting nervous, you tense up, your voice tonality changes and then you end up getting rejected. That’s because you end up getting objections that you potentially can’t even handle. These come at the wrong time, and in most cases are not necessary at all. The person was ready to buy, but the tone of your voice changes, you’re shaky and you lose the sale.

Dealing With Objections

This actually happened to me the other week. It was the last few sales that I needed and I was thinking, well let’s just get it over with. I wasn’t on point, I wasn’t as focused and I wasn’t as present as I could have been.

What happened is that I got all of these objections that I hadn’t gotten in weeks and weeks. From experience I know that this happened just because I wasn’t doing the right thing. I wasn’t just going for the close. I wasn’t deciding that this is a sale and this is happening no matter what.

I ended up still getting some sales, but I lost some too. This was towards the end of the month and it happens. But for a person new to sales, this happens on a very regular basis. There is a big variation in results. Sometimes you get five sales in a week and sometimes you get one. There is this huge inconsistency for people who are still in the mindset of breaking down the sale into multiple different pieces. They think that they need to fit it into the right order, and all sorts of other things.

Breaking it Down

For me, I don’t look at it that way anymore. Instead, I look at it as one big slippery slope towards the close. In fact, I don’t even talk about it as sales. I talk about it as closing instead.

“Oh, I’m just closing a sale.”

Or

“I’m just going to close a sale.”

It’s just complete and utter confidence that what’s going to happen is that I’m going to get the money.

Another thing that I’ve noticed beginners have issue with is the part of the sale where you talk about the money. Fortunately, there are a lot of different ways that you can talk about the money.

One way is to simply state the price. Well, it’s $2,000. However, a better way is to go and break it down on a month by month basis. For example, if you sell a website, how long will that person use the website? Probably somewhere around five years.

So when you’re talking to the client, you can break that price down over the lifetime of the product. If you’re going to use the website for five years, that means that it will cost you $400 every year. Now, you can even go further, by looking at how much that is per month. So what you can actually do is break it down smaller and smaller and smaller. If you want to you can even break it down to a single day. By that point, the number looks like almost nothing. The price becomes an insignificant amount of money.

If you explain the price like that, then that big amount starts to look much smaller. Even though $2,000 really isn’t that much, you can do the same thing with any amount of money. Even $10,000 can be narrowed down to a very small amount. This just helps to explain the value, and forces the client to think, how much does it really cost?

That’s how you can explain really big amounts, and explain how much it really is. This helps a lot, because when people are buying they often feel like it’s just a huge lump sum that they need to pay. The number becomes a huge upfront expense that is daunting to look at. However, if you explain it in a way that shows how long they’ll benefit from it, how much it really costs, then you are going to increase your close rate. It can also help if they don’t have to pay it all in advance.

Using Questions to Close the Sale

The final thing that I want to discuss is the idea of people trying to persuade with statements. In my experience, I’ve never been able to persuade anyone of anything. I’ve had people verbally agree with me when I’ve made statements, but I’ve never been able to persuade them using statements. In terms of persuasion, the only thing I’ve been able to do is to persuade people with questions. That’s because a client will never agree with something unless they came up with the idea themselves.

Of course this can be completely your idea, and you’ll lead them into it with questions, but that’s how you persuade someone. You don’t just say: this is the best chair in the world. You need to ask them a series of questions.

“What do you want in a chair?”

“What chairs have you owned in the past?”

“What did you like about them?”

“What did you not like about them?”

After you have that information you can begin to explain what this chair has that they’ve liked in the past, and what it has that they’ve needed in the past but never got. The key here is that it’s all done with questions. They themselves need to realize from your questions that the chair is valuable. If you just say “this is the best chair in the world” they’re never going to actually believe you.You need to help them realize the value of the chair based on their own words. If you can’t make that happen then you’re not going to close very many sales at all. But if you can, then you can become extremely persuasive.

Now let me ask you, when is the last time that you actually bought something from someone? Not a product where you walk into a shop and ask if you can have something in green. I mean when someone actually had to sell to you.

Think about it, was this person just telling you “oh it’s just the best! You should just buy this right now.” Or was he more like “Ok, well, what are you looking for? What have you owned in the past?” Then was he showing you products based on what you said? Did he ask more questions than make statements? If he’s any good than of course he did.

You’ll find this as a common thread with most salespeople. Although, a lot of them still actually make statements and try to persuade you, or even almost force you to buy. This just doesn’t work though. You’ll find that good salespeople will always be asking more questions and listening more than they’re talking.

So if you want to get into sales, or if you want to improve your sales, just be very mindful of this for a while. What happens too is that after a while it becomes second nature to ask more questions, and listen more than you’re talking. In the beginning, you definitely need to be consciously aware of this. You can even write down some extra questions. During the sales call, if you feel that you’re talking too much you can then always just read out one of your questions.

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