Let’s have a quick look at how we close sales and gain commitment from our clients or coachees. And time for a love story I think.
As a fully fledged signed up member of the Union of Dad’s Taxi’s, I was bringing my teenage son home from town with his new girlfriend last Saturday. They’d just been to the cinema on their first date and we were getting close to her home. It was pelting down with rain and we approached her estate, I could hear my son attempting to ask her for another date.
It was a classic close the sale situation. “Just ask her” I was pleading in my head. Just ask the girl, her body language is saying it, just ask. Easy for me to say but how easy is it to close the sale?
Closing has to be the hardest ask for any salesperson or customer adviser or counter assistant. Call us what they like, the pure fact is that, if we sell for a living, the key decider for a salesperson is being able to ask the customer to go ahead. Whether this is Jemma in the back of the car or Mr Brown who is deciding about the annual travel policy you’re selling.
So here’s a couple of great ideas to help you gain more commitment in 2011.
Question the close
Firstly use questions to ask the customer what he or she wants to do next. Here are some examples:
- “We’re in agreement then aren’t we? What’s the next step?”
- “Any more questions or are you ready to go ahead”
- “How can we make this happen?”
- “We could start this in August…what would you like me to do?”
So get used to asking questions to close the sale, they work particularly well on the phone
Pose as the Expert
A simple and effective close is to just recommend that we go ahead.
Put on your expert hat and say something like:
- “I recommend we crack on with this…shall we?”
Sometimes customers like to be directed and led to the close. They have learnt to trust you and regard you as the professional so let’s use this trust to move things along. So let’s go back to the car and the conversation on the back seat.
- Lewis “Gemma, we both had a great time tonight didn’t we, so shall we go out again next week?”
- Gemma “Lovely idea Lewis”
If only it happened like that. Instead on my way home, I had a very confused teenage boy on the back seat on his own, staring out the rain spattered window wondering why he just didn’t ask.
PS. Lewis did ask, he used Facebook to ask. What has the world turned into?
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