TouchPoint Selling

Mar 16 2009 1:27PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (2) |
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By Rick Heaston

I met with a group of sales people last week and asked them what Closing the Sale meant to them. They provided me with some interesting answers. Here’s what they said:

• Getting your customer to say yes
• Asking for the sale
• Getting a yes and completing the paperwork
• Making the deal
• And so on

We talked further and it seemed that in a sales person’s world it was either boom or bust. It’s not that way at all and nothing could be further from the truth. Let me give you some different ideas that might help you to get further … faster.

According to Neil Rackham, author of Spin Selling, Closing the Sale can be broken down into four distinct parts:

• Sale … your customer agrees to move forward and complete the paperwork
• Advance … your customer agrees to a specific action that moves the sale forward
• Continuation … your customer indicated they might want to continue, but has not agreed to any specific planned action
• No Sale … your customer refuses to a commitment

In studying both sales associate and consumer behavior, Rackham found that closing had to be defined by actions, not by nice noise. In other words, that the most successful sales people had a clear understanding of what it meant to make a sale, but in addition (and most important) they understood an advance and a continuation.

Whereby top sales people understand the realistic closing objectives necessary to move a sale forward, less successful sales people lack an understanding of defining an advance or converting a continuation. They live in a world of either making a sale, or not. And that’s wrong.

Closing success shouldn’t only be defined by whether you get your customer to sign your purchase agreement or not. Closing needs to be defined by the level of customer commitment that’s needed to make a visit successful. Let’s take that a step further

In a simple or small sale, closing boils down to two outcomes-either you get the sale or you don’t. If you make the sale you’re a hero and if not a failure. But as a sale takes on increased complexity and becomes larger in terms of your customer’s investment, closing outcomes aren’t so crystal clear.

The key to success in a large sale needs to be based on forward movement, or positive customer actions. In other words, closing needs to be based on step-by-step advances. Examples of an Advance to Close would be when your customer specifically agrees to:

• Meet with your lender
• Meet with your builder
• Visit the design center
• Let you show them how to develop a Value List
• Let you show them the Three Questions
• Let you show them how to know if a floorplan might or might not work for them
• And so on

Each and every one of these actions are part of the closing process. And that’s because they all take you a step toward your customer’s final commitment. So what’s the bottom line and my advice?

Stop looking at Closing the Sale as a boom or bust proposition and start looking at the big picture! As I said before, you’ll get further … faster and more sales if you do.

PS: More on Continuations versus Advances later this week