The Sales Archaeologist

I spend a fair amount of time each week coaching sales people one on one. We talk about particular accounts that they would like to move to the next phase – usually they want them to close. But as I have pointed out before there is a lot more to closing than the "close". One of the things that I am persistently helping sales people with goes back to the struggle they face when trying to uncover something compelling.

Yesterday a new video game went on sale and made the news - call of duty sold hundreds of thousands of copies within minutes of hitting the shelf – and nobody had to do any closing, or did they?

(and yes we have seen this phenomenon before with the IPad and other cool new products)

The facts are that all of the people that rushed out and bought were closed before they ever left home. They had already decided that they were going to spend their money and they had no doubts as to which game they were going to buy – the close happened way before the sale. There is a lesson in there for all of us, even if our close is more “formal” and is one that occurs as a result of following a repeatable and criteria based sales process. The Transaction – invoicing, payment, delivery, terms and conditions and agreements should be separated from the close – the point where the person says yes let’s get this going! The rest of that stuff is simply part of the details of doing business.

Details can bog anything down. Details can sometimes confuse. So if we try mixing these transactional events with the actual close guess what happens? Everything gets murky and things slow down or even stop.

If you can do a good job at separating the two conversations you will see your closing percentage go up. They agree and say yes - keep it simple and perhaps confirm the next step and give them some basic homework. Step two, ask for the details that you need to get everything in the system - some decision makers will even want someone else to handle this part.

"as you can imagine we have some details that will need to get sorted out and confirmed between now and the time we start helping you - would you like me to work with you on that or do you have someone else that you let handle that for you?"

Get your prospects to agree to Yes first – then sort out the details later.

By the way if you have not downloaded my new  E-Book on inbound lead conversion you can do that Here