THE ART OF CLOSING A SALE (BOOK SUMMARY)

Closing the sale has always been the most difficult part of selling.  Thankfully, Brian Tracy, author of the best-selling “The Psychology of Selling”, wrote another insightful book. In this book, he provides a step-by-step guide on how you can improve your outlook as a salesperson, and apply some of the most effective closing techniques today.

Becoming excellent in closing sales begins within you. In sales, your personality is more important than your product knowledge, sales skills and product/service that you are selling.

• In fact, your personality determines fully 80% of your sales success.

• Top salespeople have high levels of self-confidence and self-esteem. Without self-confidence, it is almost impossible to be successful in selling and you will tend to come up with every excuse to avoid talking to prospects or taking any action where there is a possibility for failure or rejection.

• There is a 1:1 relationship between being and becoming an excellent person and high levels of self-esteem. The rule is that you can never like or love anyone else more than you like yourself. So don’t expect anyone else to like you more than you like yourself.

• How you feel about yourself is the single most important determinant of the quality of all your relationships, both personal and business.

Take Charge of Your Life

• The biggest mistake you can make is to ever think that you work for anyone but yourself.

• From the time you take your first job until the day you retire, you are self-employed.

• You are the president of your own entrepreneurial corporation, selling your services into the marketplace at the highest price possible.

• You have only one employee—yourself. Your job is to sell the highest quality and quantity of your services throughout your working life.

• So be aggressive about learning and training. Take all the training you can get. and keep on upgrading your knowledge.

• Every new skill you learn is an investment in your own future.

Develop Empathy and Understanding

• Top salespeople also have high levels of empathy, i.e., they really

care about their customers.

• Ambition, the desire to achieve, combined with empathy, the genuine caring for the well-being of

your customers are the twin keys to top sales performance.

• The very best way to express and practice empathy with a customer, or with anyone else, is to ask questions and listen intently to the answers. Dominate the listening, rather than the talking.

Be Honest All The Time

• Top-selling salespeople are impeccably honest with themselves and with others. There is no substitute for honesty in selling.

• When you are completely honest with yourself and you practice the quality of empathy with others, you like yourself more, and your customers will, in turn, like and accept you.

The Magic Questions

• There are two great questions that you can use to accelerate your growth toward high income in sales:

1. What did I do right?

This question keeps you focused on the best parts of your performance. Even if the sales call was a complete failure, there were certain things that you did correctly.

You keep yourself continually focused on the best elements of your sales activities. By reviewing these activities immediately after a sales call, you program them into your subconscious and create a predisposition to repeat these positive behaviors at your next sales call.

2. What would I do differently?

This question forces you to think about the positive things that you could do to improve your performance in a similar situation. Even if the sales call has been completely successful, there were still things that you could do differently in the future to make it even better.

• The advantage of these two questions is that the answers to both of them are positive. Force yourself to review and mentally rehearse the very greatest ingredients of your performance. Then, the next time you are in a similar situation, your subconscious mind will pass them back up to you and make them available to you for the sales call.

The 100 Call Method

• For every new sales job, you should make an effort to have 100 calls and face to face interactions as soon as possible. But put the idea of selling aside for the meantime and only focus on speaking to 100 people.

• By dedicating yourself to seeing 100 people and listening to their questions and objections, you will learn more about how to sell your product.

• Moreover, since you are making no effort to sell, you will make sales almost without effort. Your energy and confidence will increase with each call you make. You become more calm and comfortable towards your customers, and in return, they will feel the same way about you. They will like you and most likely buy from you.

Related Article: The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy

Closing may be the most stressful part of selling but you can minimize the tension by making it fast and efficient.

• Reverse engineer your presentation. Plan your close first and then the sales presentation. By doing so, you become more confident in asking for the order. Plus it become easier for you to plan the sales presentation so that it arrives logically at your closing question.

• Use silence after a closing question. The only pressure you are allowed to use when selling is the pressure of silence. Whoever speaks first is the loser.

• Expect the best in every sales situation. Treat every propect as if he has the ability to buy a million dollars’ worth of what you sell.

• Ask for testimonial letters from satisfied customers. Show them to new prospects to neutralize sales resistance.

Six Major Requirements for Closing

1. You must be positive, enthusiastic, and eager to close the sale. Emotions are contagious. When it is clear that you intensely desire to make this sale, your desire will have a positive effect on the behavior of your prospect.

2. The prospect’s requirements must be clear to you. As a result of asking and listening, you should know exactly what this prospect wants and needs from your product.

3. The prospect must understand your offer and the value of your product or service to him or her. He or She must be absolutely clear about what your product does to change and improve his or her life or work.

4. The prospect must believe and trust you. There must be a high degree of rapport and friendship. In addition, the prospect must have faith in your company and believe that they will deliver on your promises.

5. The prospect must desire to enjoy the advantages and benefits of your offer. He or She must want what you are selling. There is no point in trying to close a sale if the prospect is not intensely interested in benefiting from your product or service.

6. The product must be suited to the customer, ideal for his or her needs, the capacity to pay, and circumstances. It must be clear to the prospect that this product or service is the right choice for him or her at this time.

• Only when you have fulfilled these five requirements can you move confidently into closing the sale. If any of them has not been achieved, the prospect will refuse to buy.

Answer Questions with a Question

• Whoever asks the questions has the control.

• Question: How much does this cost?

Answer with: How soon do you need it?

• Question: How long will delivery take?

Answer with: How many do you want?

• When the customer answers, the sale is made.

Related Article: The Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar

There are no sales without objections. Actually, objections indicate interest. Objections are signposts that lead you step by step toward closing the sale.

• Law of Six: This law says that there are never more than six objections to any offer. There may be one or two, but there are never more than six. Even if you hear fifty or one hundred objections in the course of a week or a month, all of these objections can be clustered into a small number of categories.

Strategies for Eliminating Objections

1. Use a testimonial. One of the most powerful ways to eliminate objections is to present testimonial letters from satisfied customers who shared that objection at one time.

Objection: “It costs too much”

Answer: “That’s a good question. Why does it seem to cost more than you expected to pay?” You then go on to answer the question that you have posed.

2. Make it easy to object. Most customers do not want to get into an argument or a debate with you over your product or service. They will be reluctant to object for fear that you will become upset or adamant. For this reason, you must make it easy for the customer to object by responding in a cheerful, friendly, constructive way when he does.

3. Listen carefully. When you get an objection, hear it out completely. Don’t assume that you know what the prospect is going to say.

Question for clarification: “How do you mean?”

Feed it back in your own words to prove to the prospect that you were listening and that you understand her real concern.

4. Be polite and respectful. Treat every objection with kindness, courtesy, and respect. Even if you have heard the objection a thousand times, always respond as though it is a valuable and worthwhile comment on your offering. When you handle their objections with warmth and tact, prospects realize that you genuinely care about how they feel. as a result, they will begin to genuinely care about you and the product or service you represent.

9 Common Objections

1. Unspoken Objections. No words just actions showing signs of hesitation.

Respond by letting the prospects talk more. Ask open-ended questions, lean forward and listen intently to the answers. The more they answer, the more likely they will tell you what’s holding them back.

2. Excuses ranging from being happy with their current product/supplier to not interested at the moment.

Respond by: That’s all right. Most people in your situation felt the same way when I first called on them. But now they have become our best customers, and they even recommend us to their friends.

3. Malicious Objections meaning you caught them at a bad time thus making you the outlet of their anger or frustration.

Respond by remaining calm and professional. You are not the target. Let them vent out, listen and soon enough they will feel more comfortable around you and you will become their confidante.

4. Request for More Information ie benefits, results etc

Respond by providing concrete information. Never overpromise. Just answer truthfully.

5. Show-Off Objections showing you they already know a lot, if not more about your product/service/industry

Respond by taking the low road. Dominate the listening and let the prospect dominate the talking. Make him feel important and he will eventually warm up to you, then buy from you.

6. Subjective Objections or personal objections – aimed at you. It may mean that you come off too strongly or talking about yourself too much.

Respond by asking the prospect questions. Make him/her the center of attention. This is the best way to stop the criticisms and go back to selling.

7. Objective Objections or factual objections about the capability or benefits of what you are offering.

Respond by giving testimonials, and other proof that your product will do what you say it will. The key is to assure the prospect his/her needs will be met.

8. General Sales Resistance happens even before you start. The prospect just don’t want to be sold to.

Respond by: “Mr./Ms. Prospect, I’m not going to try to sell you anything today. All I want to do is ask you questions and see if there is some way that my company can help you achieve your goals in a cost-effective way. Would that be alright?”

9. Last Ditch Objections after you have clearly made your sales presentation. But there is a slight hesitation before the decision.

Prospect asks “How do I know I am getting my money’s worth?” “Are you sure I am getting the best deal?”

Respond by assuring the prospect that you are giving him/her the best deal, price and everything else that he/she is most concerned about.

Related Article: The Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling

The Ascending Close

• The ascending, or part-by-part close involves a series of questions, each one leading into the other, with eachone requiring a “yes” answer.
• The questions start from the most general and then go down to the most specific. Each one more narrowly qualifies the prospect as being interested in and capable of buying.
• If you can ask six“yes” questions at the beginning of your presentation, it’s hard thereafter for the person to say no.
• Virtually all life insurance, professional products, educational products, mutual funds, stockbroking services and banking services are sold by the ascending-close presentation.

The Invitational Close

• At the end of asales presentation, you should issue a direct or an indirect invitation to buy.
• One of the most powerful is “Why don’t you give us a try.”
• Nobody can ever afford the price the first time it is mentioned. The reason for this is the law of the excluded alternative: Because we have a limited amount of money, whenever we buy anything, it eliminates all the other things we could buy with that money.
• Willingness to pay and ability to pay are two different things. The way you increase the willingness to pay is by increasing buying desire.
• Whenever you can avoid it, don’t talk about price; always talk about benefits.
• Price resistance is simply the prospect telling you that you haven’t given him enough evidence that the benefits will outweigh the price.

The following suggestions will help you handle price objections:

1. Don’t mention price until the customer asks the price.
2. Always concentrate on the value he receives, not on the money you receive.
3. Always justify the price with sound reasons.
4. Compare the price to more expensive items.
5. Stretch the price over the life of the product.

Other Examples:

Prospect 1: “Too short of cash right now”

Response : “What if we could give you terms?”

Prospect 2: “I have budget limitations”

Response : “We can delay payment to the next budget period.”

Prospect 3: “I didn’t expect it would cost this much”

Response 1: “There are very good reasons for that price…” then keep talking about the advantages and benefits of your product.

Response 2: “Sir/Maam, did you ever get anything cheap that turned out to be of quality?”

Response 3: “How far apart are we?” or “What do we have to do to make a deal today? Let me know your price and I will tell you one way or another if we can make that work”

• With a customer who is procrastinating on the buying decision, take the filled-out sales contractand tell him either this is a good idea and he ought to go ahead with it, or it’s not a good idea and he ought to forget it. In 60 percent of cases, the person will sign.

The Secondary Close

• This involves closing on a minor point in the sales presentation, acceptance of which denotes acceptance of the entire offer.

• Example: The person is looking at a refrigerator and you say,

“Will you want this in blue or green?” 

“Would you like us to deliver this to your home this afternoon, or will tomorrow be all right?”

• The color or delivery date is the secondary issue. The purchase is the major issue. If the prospect answers with the his/her preference, the sale has been made.

The Alternative Close

• Remove the stress of making a buying decision, thus you provide the prospect something or something else, rather than something or nothing at all.

• Similar to the Secondary Close Example: The person is looking at a refrigerator and you say,

“Will you want this in blue or green?”

“Would you like us to deliver this to your home this afternoon, or will tomorrow be all right?”

• Customers nowadays are highly individualistic. They prefer to have choices than ulitmatums. Instead of offering one product, offer an alternative way of buying the same product.

The Take-Away Close

• When the person is hesitating, you halt the presentation and say,

“Oh, just a minute. Before we go any further, let me make sure we have this available in the warehouse for you.” 

“Let me just check with my manager and see if we can arrange immediate delivery. Can you wait here a second?” or “Why don’t you come with me so we can…”

• If the prospect agrees, the decision to buy is made.

The Summary Close

• This close is excellent when you make a detailed list of all the benefits the customer will enjoy from the product, then rank them in order of importance and plan your presentation to introduce them in order.
• Watch for the one or two benefits that seem to be of greatest interest, and repeat them over and over.
• At the end of the presentation say:

“Have I covered everything?” if the prospect says yes, ask “How soon would you need this?

The Puppy-Dog Close

• This involves letting the prospect touch, taste,feel, hold or try out the product or service.
• Use this close if you have a product that a person can test-drive, for example, or take home.
• Use the phrases:

“Take a look…”

“Why don’t you bring this home for the weekend?”

“If you don’t like this we have a money back guarantee”

The Ben Franklin Close

• What makes this so popular is because it is a close that exactly corresponds with the way your mind makes a major decision of any kind.
• Take out a sheet of paper, and draw a line down the center. On one side, you write reasons in favor of going ahead with the buying decision. On the other side, the customer writes his reasons opposing it.
• More often than not, your reasons for buying will be longer (benefits, features etc) and more comprehensive than the fewer reasons that the prospect could think of right then and there.

The Order-Sheet Close

• When the prospect comes in or when you begin talking with the prospect for the first time, take out an order sheet or a sales contract, or whatever form you use, and start filling it out.
• Whenever the prospect objects, just say that you have a poor memory and you need to remember the details.
• Keep on filling in the form as you speak making the prospect feel that it is being customized to suit his/her needs.
• At the end ask for the correct spelling of their name. If they answer, you’ve made your sale.

The Relevant-Story Close

• People like stories. You simply tell a story about a happy client who was as hesitant as the prospect but followed your advice, bought the product and was very pleased with it.

The Walk-Away Close

• When you use the walk-away close, you assure the prospect that you have been selling this item to repeat customers for years, and that most of them had shopped around before they bought from you.
• Remember that logic does make sales. If you give him/her a logical reason from buying from you instead of checking other options, you can often prevent the prospect from walking away.

The Today-Only Close (variation of The Walk-Away Close)

• This requires that you create a reason to give the customer a special deal that is a now-or-never proposition, or good for today only.
• There is a rule in selling: no urgency, no sale.

The Lost-Sale Close

• The lost-sale, or doorknob, is used when the customer has refused to buy. As you get up to leave, ask the real reason he didn’t buy. When he gives that reason, go back in and try to close again.

Note on Referrals

• Every buyer or non-buyer is a source of referrals.
• A referral is worth 10 to 15 times a cold call. So after the sale, you should take the referrals and immediately call on the new prospects.
• If you develop a system for obtaining and following up on referrals, you can greatly increase the quality of your sales calls.

Related Article: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

Suggested Action Exercises

• Plan everyday in advance by making a list of everything you have to do, and then set priorities.
• Start each day by asking yourself, “What can I, and only I, do that if done well will make the greatest difference in my work?”
• Develop a sense of urgency, a bias for action, get up and get going early. Work all the time you work.
• Upgrade your skills continually. Always ask yourself, “What is my one skill, that if I develop and use it excellently, would help me the most to double my income?” Whatever your answer, work on that everyday.
• Read sixty minutes each morning, attend sales seminars quarterly, and listen to audio learning programs in your car. Never stop getting better.

Related Article: Executive Summary of Books Billionaires Read