SKILL Effortless Closing JOAN LEOTTA
After you’ve worked hard with a prospect and given a presentation that will win the sale, it’s time to close.
“When you close, it’s time to let customers know how you can serve them – not sell to them. If you’ve been good at your job of presenting, so customers see you as offering a service that will meet their needs, you don’t need a closing line at all – the client will ask you for the business,” offers a sales manager from Madison, WI. “It’s important to remember that, when you’re closing, you’re not just selling the product, you’re asking for the customer’s trust – and you’re sell- ing your whole company.” In sales, the most common close traditionally has been to end a pre-
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sentation by asking for the business. However, the most effective closing lines are those that flow naturally from the presentation and address each individual customer’s needs. “The most useful closing lines I know are not really set lines,” says the sales manager, who had years of field sales experience prior to taking on a management role. “Every situation is different, and I want to say something that’s personal to the customer.” From the beginning, create the right mood to encourage customers to buy. “In building toward the closing it’s important to set up a positive atmo-
sphere,” he advises. “Learn about their needs and then set up a series of questions that will elicit ‘yes’ answers.” In fact, knowing what’s important to customers cannot be stressed enough, he explains. “If image is important to a business – and I’m selling Mercedes – I might ask, ‘When you’re interviewing a power client and you want to take them out to dinner, a sign of success would be taking them to that dinner in a Mercedes, right?’” In his closings he uses key words that convey a sense of urgency and strike a chord with issues customers found particularly interesting during the presentation. “If safety was important to them, then safety is what should be stressed in the closing,” he says. Building trust and learning custom- ers’ needs is even more challenging when selling over the telephone, according to an inside phone-sales representative from Bowie, MD. She creates trust with her voice, using the right tone and pace. Delivery of the entire conversation – from the initial questions to the close – is important. She emphasizes, “I want to appear unhurried and calm.”
She also says that a good close
flows from knowledge of the custom- er’s needs. In her business, the cus- tomer – which can be a three-person firm or a large corporation with many divisions – often calls with an urgent need: X number of computers or a server by the next day, for instance. “It’s my job to weed out their needs from their wants,” she explains. “Most of the time I deal with short-fuse issues – a product they need right away and they must make a decision quickly. It is my job to know what we have and discern what they need, so I can make a good match for them.” Callers may ask for equipment and configurations her company doesn’t have available. However, she probes and discovers whether another system or configuration will really do the job for them. “I have to determine if we have what they asked for, or if an alternative solution will actually meet their needs and make the customers feel at ease.”
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