Test closes are brilliant ways of testing the water with your customers. We all use them probably without even knowing it as it’s something you always hear top performing salespeople doing.
Tell me the difference between these four test closes:
- How do you feel so far?
- How does it look to you so far?
- What are you saying to yourself so far?
- What are you hearing so far?
They all attempt to do the same thing, in other words, test the customers’ views and thoughts so you can continue with the meeting. Classic test closing. I wonder which one you tend to use with your clients or when coaching.
And I bet one of them really hit the mark with you, or resonated with you more, or was a question you could personally relate to.
You see the four test closes are carefully scripted to appeal to your thinking style. NLP gives us visual, kinaesthetic, auditory and digital thinking styles and everyone has a preference to think predominantly in one fashion although we’re quite capable of using all of them. We just prefer one.
If you can gauge your customer’s preferred style, then change your language to suit their favourite. Do start with one of the four test closes from above because it’s easy to do so, gets you into the habit and you could start tomorrow, couldn’t you?
The best way to calibrate your customers’ preferred thinking style is to listen to their language or keep an eye on their eye movements. There’s a great article on eye movements in our knowledge bank.
Speak soon, or see you next week or let’s touch base next time.
