Trust Your High-Performing Sales Team To Close
Legendary closers are like Bigfoot, like leprechauns. They just don’t exist. But if you look at the classifieds under sales jobs, companies are always looking to hire skilled closers. Somehow, closing has become some kind of mythical skillset only a handful of enlightened beings have mastered.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is no skill in closing. Zero. Zip. Nada. If you can form sentences, you can close. Why? Because all the heavy lifting is done at the front end of the sales process. The fact is, there are only six variants in closing:
Direct Close
Alternate-Choice Close
Minor-Point Close
Balancing Close
Next-Step Close
Opportunity Close
Though the Direct Close is always preferred, you can always go for an Alternate-Choice Close: Do you want option A or B? Do you want to go with the three-year contract or the seven-year contract? Or you can opt for the Balancing Close: Here are the pros and cons…looks like moving forward makes a lot of sense, right?
See what I mean? There’s really no skill involved. These aren’t deep questions.
Take the Minor-Point Close, for instance. When I first bought club seats to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers, they were going for about $20,000 per year.
The salesperson began the close with: “So what are your thoughts on moving forward?”
I said, “I gotta think about this.”
Then he Minor-Pointed me. “Well, do you want the names on the seats in your name or your company’s name?”
I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a little placard in the seats at the club level, and they have your personal name or your company’s.”
Game over. He had me. He used the Minor-Point Close to gauge my interest.
Whichever technique you use, you might end up fleshing out other objections. You might go back to negotiating again. But the process has to come to an end at some point. So stop looking under shamrocks and wearing night vision goggles to find closers.
If you have a high-performing sales team, you already have legendary closers.
If you want to build a legendary sales team that can close business, make sure they have their sales process down to a science. Get your team Selling is an Away Game today. Available online at Amazon.
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