How to Double Your Sales Team’s Closing Ratio

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By Charles Alvarez , Contributor, the Price of Business Show. * Sponsored

 

 

In the last fifty years, more than 4,000 books have been written on the subject of selling. Many of them are hundreds of pages long and full of complex strategies, tactics, formulas, methods, and techniques. However, they can all be broken down into three key elements. They are: (1) Prospect; (2) Present; and (3) Follow up and close.

 

 

1. Prospecting. This is the beginning of the sales process and the most important part. If you have enough qualified prospects in the front end of your sales pipeline, you will almost inevitably get enough completed sales out of the other end of the pipeline.

 

 

A prospect is defined as “someone who can and will buy and pay for your product or service within a reasonable period of time.”

A prospect is not someone who likes you or what you sell. It is someone who has the money, the need, and the authority to buy what you sell, combined with an intense desire to enjoy the benefits of your offering as soon as possible.

 

 

A good prospect is someone who likes and respects you and your company, wants and needs what you are selling, has the money and the power to make a buying decision, and is ready to move ahead with the buying decision as quickly as possible.

 

 

A prospect is not someone who likes you but has no money, no authority, no need, and no urgency. A prospect is not someone who might buy your product or service in a year or two. A prospect is someone who puts food on the table today. Your job is to find as many of them as possible by clearly identifying your ideal prospects and then focusing all of your time, all day long, on speaking to more of these people.

 

 

2. Presenting. Presenting is the inner game of selling. Your ability to establish rapport and trust, identify the true problem or needs of the prospect, and then show the prospect that your product or service is, all things considered, the ideal solution for him is the key to sales success.

 

 

The good news is that all sales skills are learned. Some of the highest paid and most successful salespeople in the world today could at one time not sell their way across the street. But they settled down and studied selling and the sales profession. They learned the critical skills. They memorized the right questions to ask and the correct responses to customer concerns and objections. They planned their work and worked their plan. As a result, they got better and better, and eventually they sold more and more.

 

 

The more of your product you sell, the easier it becomes for you to sell even more of it. You become more knowledgeable and skilled about the sales process. You become more familiar with the most common concerns of the prospects you speak to. Soon you learn how to identify and isolate a good prospect in a few seconds of conversation. You learn how to identify the “hot buttons” of a particular prospect and focus your presentation on satisfying the most important needs he has.

 

 

3. Follow Up and Close. In golf they say, “You drive for show but you putt for dough.” In sales, you prospect and pre- sent for show, but you close for dough. Your ability to over- come the final objections and then get the customer to take action on your offer is the critical part of modern selling.

 

 

Take the time to think through and identify your ideal customer, based on the benefits you sell and the needs you satisfy. Use your creativity and imagination to find more and more of these ideal prospects. Learn how to present your product persuasively so that your prospect considers you and your company to be the ideal choice. Finally, learn how to ask for the order and get the customer to make a buying decision.

 

 

The more of these three tasks you perform, and the better you get at each one, the simpler and easier selling will be for you, and the more money you will earn.

 

 

 

Sponsored by the Price of Business, on Bloomberg’s home in Houston, TX

 

 

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