When you come up with an idea for a new product or service and develop it for market, you will need to sell it to prospective customers. Selling involves a process of qualifying the prospective customer, presenting an appeal to buyer needs and finally closing the sale.
If you are going to be successful in your start-up or existing business, it stands to reason that the more sales you make, the more successful your business will be. It also means that the better you are at closing sales, the more revenue you will produce for your business. Knowing how to close sales is therefore critical to the success of your new product or service.
Closing the sale results in an agreement being reached, a contract being signed and an acceptance by the buyer to purchase the goods. But this is the end game. To understand how to close a sale you really need to go right back to the beginning.
Gaining the order actually starts when you qualify the prospective customer as a potential buyer. Your sales process then involves building relationships with your customer, winning their trust and a growing sense of good feelings and emotional connections. How often in your own experience have you bought from someone you trust? You use your intuition or gut feelings to detect if the salesperson will really look after your best interests.
Customers buy from people they like. If your only concern is selling something, your buyer will look elsewhere. We can tell when a person is genuinely interested and concerned about us and our situation.
When you understand the emotional side involving selling and all other decision-making, you’ll realise that manipulating prospects with sales closing tactics is doomed to fail. Aggressive selling destroys relationships; relationship selling nurtures a bond between buyer and seller.
Forget about the 50 manipulative closes such as the “Intimidation close”, “Scream close” and the “Afraid of the dark Close.” Sure, know what a closing question is but remember relationships and trust make the sale.
The emotional approach to selling makes small trial closes such as “when would you want to purchase – today, next week, at month end?” become an intimate exchange between you and your customer.
After you have build rapport, assisted the customer on how to select the product she’s looking for, show her the features and benefits, help her find out whether the product fits her needs, the closing question seems relevant and non-confrontational:
“If we can make this (your product) fit within your budget, would you be interested in purchasing it today?”
It takes time to build and nurture relationships. But that’s because barriers need to be lifted.
Closing the sale is actually faster and easier when you hold the right mindset and genuinely put the customers’s interests first.
