In Sales let your goal be Closing the Sale

We are going to continue our study of Sun Tzu today and talk about one of his teaching, “In way, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns” and how we can apply this to a sales strategy.

How does what Sun Tzu speak of apply to a sales cycle. Well, our ‘war’ is the sales cycle as it relates to each individual customer and our ultimate goal to close the customer starting with our very first cold call.

There is no advantage to a long and drawn out sales cycle if we are not trying at every opportunity to close the sale. Yes, one of the primary traits of a sales person is patience but that does not mean not we are not always trying to close.

There are a number of ways you can prompt a customer to close a sale depending on what your product or service is but they all have one thing in common. Make your customer take some sort of action.

One technique is to offer some sort of benefit for a close today. Perhaps something like “Today, we can give you a special price” or “We are offering a 10% discount this week” or “If we can get your order completed today we can move you to the front of the queue” or even “Because of a cancellation we have room in our production cycle to slot you in if you want to move forward before someone else gets the slot”.

These types of statements work to create a sense of urgency with your customers; however be careful when using them. Not all customers appreciate a “if you do it today we can do it cheaper” approach. Has a little bit of that used car salesman feel.

Another technique is to summarize your sales call. If you are trying to sell window blinds for instance, you would summarize the type and quality of the blinds. You would then move on to value added services like installation, how long that would take and if there is a cost. Then perhaps, taking from the paragraph above, say “when would you like us to schedule installation?”

Just remember using this technique your first goal is to summarize but you must also add some sort of action item for an effective sales strategy. Remember, you are trying to close the sale, not just talk about the product or service during your sales calls.

Another way to close is similar to the first. Offer some sort of bonus for a commitment today. Taking the example of window blinds above you might say, “If you order today, I can give you a free set of blinds” or “If you want to commit today, I can get you free installation.”

Typically you would offer this if the customer is asking questions that seem to be indicating they are thinking of moving forward. That way it doesn’t seem so much like a sales trick.

These can be effective ways to close a sales deal and a good part of any sales strategy. But, there others we like better.

We feel asking probing questions that solicit further consideration and dialogue from the customer is usually a better approach.

You might ask questions like:

“What do you think about our product/service?”

“Do you think our product/service would solve your problem?”, you should have already identified what their problems are as part of your overall sales strategy during your initial cold call. There are a number of cold call techniques you could use to do this which we discuss in other articles.

If your customer answers affirmative to your questions, they continue to close the sales. If you customer expresses concerns or has questions that is great. Answer them and then continue to close.

There are lots of other questions you can ask.

“Does our service match your expectations?”

“Do you think our produce would be valuable to your company?”

Many of these you could ask after you provided additional information based on concerns the customer expressed based on your first set of questions. This will help you make sure you answered the customers concerns and uncover any other concerns.

When you are working on your cold call script you should include a section on closing the sales. In this section you can use the sales closing techniques above as well as brainstorm new ones.

The point is, don’t go into the cold call without any idea of how to finalize the sale.

As SunTzu says, that is the whole point!

 

Read Next: Waging War or Sales