The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

You are there to assist people in finding the right solution to their problem. Your expert advice is given in an informed and informative way. You need to listen well to what the client’s needs and desires are before you can even attempt to sell her a solution. And it must be the best solution for her particular problem. Therefore, the art of closing sales is not the process of persuading people to make decisions, but the art of making decisions with which people agree.

The beauty of closing the deal in sales is that this actually does resolve problems. Sadly, when we refer to “closing the deal” in sex, this usually just creates more problems. If the final agreement did not end simultaneously, there’s a massive issue. If your pitch was anything less than perfect and sustained, then there’s a problem!

Every time you manage to close a sales deal, you feel great about having discovered the best solution and having resolved the client’s problem. You have that guaranteed satisfaction after every close.

Part of your sales job is to continually reassure your customer that she is making the right decision by purchasing. If you leave her hanging long enough, there will be time for doubt to creep in. Don’t allow that to happen. You are her support during the dealings and discussions and you need to remind her of that by being her ongoing source of reassurance. A failure to close the deal comes from an inadequate performance in other areas. If you let your game slip at any point in the sales process, you have potentially endangered the success of the deal.

When closing the deal, fulfilling your client’s needs (and helping them get a useful product) actually fulfils your needs as well. If the deal is heading for closure then both parties will walk away fulfilled and satisfied -simultaneously, every time! It doesn’t get better than that!

Helping your customers can actually be a very fulfilling prospect of its own. It’s an important role that you play in the client’s life as she depends on you for your level of expertise on the subject. The beauty of sales is that once you find a suitable presentation you can use that same pitch each time, simply adapted to the current client’s needs. And with such a successful pitch, you can easily close more than one customer in one day - and not feel guilty. You can close a different customer every day and not feel concerned about a tarnished reputation. Again, with sales, it all boils down to “the more the merrier”.

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If you are interested to learn more about the art of closing, get my new book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” - www.SellingIsBetter.com

Learning multiplies with fun, Alen’s book proves it. It is simply unputdownable and highly recommended! Book is available at Amazon.”

Reviewed by Ashraf Chaudhry
Sales Trainer & Author of The Craft of Selling “YOURSELF”

The first step of the Closing Stage is getting the prospect to make the right decision. Once Interest and Desire have been secured and Objections eliminated, you need to help the prospect come to the right Decision about buying the product.
Always be sure of yourself, without being over-confident. Assure the customer that he is making the right decision by purchasing the product or service. Reinforce that assurance without repeating your sales pitch. If you’ve done well in your presentation then you have successfully brought the prospect to the Closing point. Simply repeating your sales pitch and constantly reasserting that information in an effort to get him to make a decision will be fruitless. You need to help him to weigh up the decision and aid him in focusing on the positive aspects of purchasing the product.

The Decision to buy takes place in the prospect’s heart and mind. But it is up to the salesperson to translate that Decision into actually Placing the Order. It is entirely possible that a prospect can make a decision to buy and then reverse his decision and walk away without placing an order. This is why it is imperative for you to get the prospect to state his intent to purchase. After that, he is unlikely to change his mind and walk away without the order.

There is a law of human nature referred to as the “continuity of action”. The continuity of action is more powerful in leading to new acts than any other process. This means that if you want your prospect to do a certain thing, the best way is to start him doing something. Get him involved in some sort of action, and then it’s easy for him to switch to another action; such as signing an order.

SECURING THE DECISION AND OBTAINING AN ORDER

Closing is so often regarded as the most difficult part of the selling process.  But this should never be the case! Getting the order from a prospect whose interest and desire have been secured and whose objections have been effectively eliminated should simply be the next logical step in the process.

By the closing stage, the prospect has already been convinced that he NEEDS the products; he has the means to pay for them; he WANTS them and he feels assured that they will satisfy his needs. Thereafter, it would seem that getting the order is the natural course of action to take and is really a mere formality.

Perhaps closing is regarded as being difficult because of a salesperson’s inability to secure a “yes” in the final stage of his presentation. However, if the salesperson has been successful in his pitch then the prospect should be primed to buy. So if the prospect says “no” even after his objections have been properly handled something new must have come up that has balked his desire; or the salesperson has failed to perform some final service for the prospect that has prevented completion of the sale. It’s up to you to discover what may have gone wrong and then jump into action in order to secure the order.

Of course, it is difficult to close a prospect whose objections have not been efficiently and effectively dealt with.  It’s even harder to get an order from a prospect whose desire for the products hasn’t been aroused. The sale is nearly impossible to secure if the prospect has shown no interest either. If any of the steps of the selling process have been handled inefficiently then closing the deal becomes all the more difficult.

Next week: The First Step of the Closing Stage

In the presentation you lead your prospect step by step through the successive stages of conviction to the point of desire. Right there is where the order is yours for the taking. But to get it you’ve got to take it.
There’s no secret about being able to tell when your prospect feels kindly towards your proposition. Watch the prospect closely. And the minute they begin to sway your way you can tell it just as surely as you can feel heat and cold upon your body. And that minute is the right time to try to take the order.

Stop selling and start closing.

Right here I want to make a distinction: a big one.
There’s a distinct difference between asking for the order and trying to take it.
The salesperson that asks for orders says, “Do you want this?” And in doing so the sales professional does two things wrong.
First of all, it invites a negative answer, and makes it easy for the prospect to say “No.” Secondly, a definite “No” to a question of this kind can end the meeting. A decision has been passed; you’ll have a real job trying to get your listener to reverse it.
Here is the right way to try for the order. When you feel that the time is ripe, act just as if your prospect had verbally said, “Yes”.
Start discussing terms, details of delivery, or something that comes after the order is placed.
There are so many closing techniques, and I will give you here on my blog an example or two, like Alternative Choice Close or Assumptive Close, but more important message I am trying to send here is this one:
never forget to ask your customers for the order. Never.

As an illustration, you’re selling a new organic breakfast cereal to a grocer. You’ve made your talk; you feel that the grocer is ready to buy. Instead of asking the grocer to purchase, you take it for granted that the grocer is going to and swing right into the details of taking the order just as if the grocer had verbally said “Yes.”
You’re making it hard to say “No.”
In the full realization that a fifty boxes order would be a large one for the one you’re talking to, you say, “You’ll want at least a hundred boxes, won’t you?”
Now if he is ready to buy, he’ll come right back with “No, I will only use forty boxes at a time.”
If he’s undecided: half for and half against - your suggestion as to the quantity - the mention of one hundred turns his mind from the question of whether of buying or not to the amount the grocer will purchase.
Do you see what that method of procedure does? It gracefully and easily passes the decision point, and moves you right down to actually taking the order.

On the other hand, suppose your judgment was wrong; suppose your prospect is not ready to purchase.
If you had come right out and asked for a definite decision you would have received a “No” and that would have pretty near ended the matter.
But a “No” to the quantity question does not mean an adverse decision to the entire proposition. It leaves you free to pick up your selling argument again and reinforce your statements until your prospect is ready to buy.

By definition, a sale is the act of meeting prospective buyers and providing them with a product or service in return for money or other agreed upon compensation. A sale is an act of completion of a commercial activity. The “deal is closed”, means the customer has consented to the proposed product or service by making full or partial payment (as in the case of installments) to the seller.

Selling is therefore a process in which you need to follow certain steps, one at a time, to reach your final goal – the sale itself.
The same fundamentals that govern the direct sale of tangible goods govern the indirect sales of intangible goods.
Your sales process will also depend on your efforts invested in research and understanding your customer base, together with your energy and enthusiasm about your product.

Sometimes you can skip some steps if the customer is giving you signals to move further, faster. Otherwise, it solely depends on you and your readiness to be prepared before contacting the prospect.

If we simplify the whole sales process we can agree that there are four major steps in sales:

1. opening/qualifying
2. information gathering
3. presentation of your proposal, and
4. closing.

Opening phase is usually a result of a cold call to someone who has not yet heard of you or thought about working with you.

Information gathering is a second step when sales person is asking customers what they do, how they do it, and why they do it that way. Then he/she ask how his company can help them do it better. Usually second step means getting the meeting or presentation opportunity.

Proposal is next step when sales person is giving the presentation based on the gathered information, and giving the recommendation or meaningful solution to solve their pains, issues, or needs.

When customer decides to buy that is a fourth step in sales process and the only step that actually counts - closing the deal. This means they see the value in your solution and you assisted to buyer to make a decision based on information you provided.

When you don’t close the deal you did not completed your process. It is very similar to playing baseball when you get to the third base but never reach home and score; in sales this means you have gone through three steps but on the end you didn’t engaged buyer enough to see the value in your solution.

You didn’t address their needs that will trigger a buy to happen. You have wasted your time and your customer’s time, and there is hardly any chance of getting back to that customer to try to sell again.

More about the lead generation, cold calling, presenting, objection handling and closing techniques you can learn on my regularly scheduling webinars. Feel free to subscribe to my daily sales tips newsletter.