The ultimate guide to closing in sales

What is Closing?

Closing is an important skill to learn in sales. It can be the difference between the high performers and the under performers. In it’s simplest terms closing is asking for the business, asking if a potential customer wants to go ahead with your proposal. It can be as easy as that, unfortunately lots of sales people over complicate it or sometimes even forget about it.

Making the close viable depends on a number of things, sales after all is a process. As long as you have done the ground work and introduced yourself, understood the customers needs and matched a solution then it makes sense to ask if the customer wants to go ahead with the proposal.

When you ask for the business, sometimes the customer will go ahead with it, although do not be surprised if a customer says no and gives a reason why. That is what they call an objection, we will cover objection handling in another blog as it is a big subject. Assuming you have answered the objection, you should always ask for the business again after. This could happen a number of times, and you should always ask for the business again immediately after answering their objection.

Why do sales people close?

Sales people ask for the business as 90% of the time a customer will not ask you to ask you to close the business off for you. They want you to show interest in their business and want their custom. There are a number of indicators to watch out for, such as buying questions, like if they can pay in instalments or lump sum, or if it comes in red or blue. This is when you should be asking if they want to go ahead.

When it comes to asking for the business there are three main ways to ask for the business, everyone has a preference, so play around with each one to see which one suits for sales style. The three types of close are:

• Assumptive – This close is when you take the lead and assume the customer will go for it. For example, ‘I’ll book that in for you now’.
• Alternative – The alternative close is a favourite of mine, you offer two or three options ask which one they prefer. ‘I have the gold or silver option, which one would you prefer?’
• Ask – This type of close is fantastic in a soft sales environment, like a customer service led growth model. You simply ask if the customer would like to go ahead with the proposal, for example, ‘Would you like to book this in today?’.

Closing and how to use it

As a sales person you should want to use a close, it is how you wrap up a conversation once the customer is happy with your proposal. My advice is to use different closes to see which works for you. Try not to over complicate it, you are simply asking if the customer is happy to proceed.

Closing has some crude stigmas in sales over the years. People over think it, or are scared of it, but it is just asking if you want to do business with me. It’s a request, it is asking if the customer is happy to proceed, they will soon tell you if they are not.

Conclusion

If you want to be a high performer, you should want to learn to close and close confidently. It’s a case of knowing when to ask for the business, like I said it is a process. You cannot close someone as soon as you introduce yourself. Work out your product, the industry and type of customer you have and you will be half to asking for the business like a professional.

If you wish to find out more on closing, contact us and we are more than happy to arrange one to one coaching or even work with your business.