Closing a Sale In a Day For Dummies

By Tom Hopkins

Get the know-how to close a deal and make your quota—in a day!

Closing a Sale In A Day For Dummies outlines the anatomy of a sales closing, offers strategies for asking the right questions, and gives you invaluable tips for overcoming tough customers.

• The anatomy of a close
• Questioning and listening strategies
• No frills closing techniques
• Overcoming tough customers

This e-book also links to an online component at dummies.com that extends the topic into step-by-step tutorials and other "beyond the book" content.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Oct 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781118491164

Book preview

Introduction

Closing is the be-all and end-all in selling. Getting the approval on the dotted line of the final agreement is the number one goal of everyone involved in selling a product, service, or idea to another individual or a company.

Many salespeople walk away from a non-sale situation feeling defeated, wondering what they could’ve done differently to close the sale. Unfortunately, these defeated salespeople often don’t invest the time to survey prospective clients about why they didn’t make the purchase. When you do ask clients why they chose not to own your product, many of them state that they were never asked! They were never asked? What kind of salesperson goes through all the other steps and then doesn’t even ask for the sale? The answer: salespeople of every type.

For you, the person who is dedicated enough to download a copy of this book, don’t give up. My goal here is to help you gain a solid perspective on what closing is and give you some simple yet powerful ways to ask people for their commitment to your product or service. And the more comfortable you are, the more comfortable your customers will be.

What You Can Do In A Day

Unless you’re superhuman, you probably won’t master the art of closing a sale in a single day. However, you can spend a day (or even just parts of your day) absorbing the simple, straightforward information I provide in Closing a Sale In A Day For Dummies. In this book, I walk you through how a close generally works and describe some basic closing methods. I explain how to ask the right questions, how to play psychiatrist with your customers about fears they have that keep them from buying, and how to get an answer from the worst procrastinators on your client list. Of course, a close is only truly successful when it stays closed, which is why I demonstrate how to overcome buyer’s remorse. Read this book from beginning to end or skip to the topics that interest you most. Either way, you’re headed in the right direction to become a better closer!

Foolish Assumptions

I wrote this book with the traditional salesperson in mind. By traditional, I mean someone who earns a living primarily from moving products or services into the lives of end-users. This book is for you if you

check.png Find yourself hesitating to ask for the sale.

check.png Have ever walked away from a sale because your enthusiastic clients didn’t jump up and say, We’ll take it! and immediately reach for their checkbook.

check.png Are a career salesperson who wants to boost your closing ratio.

check.png Are a small business person struggling to grow your business, whether it’s business with suppliers or clients.

Icons Used in This Book

To help you get even more out of this book, I include several icons to draw your attention to important information that can improve your sales success:

remember_4c.eps If you take nothing else away other than the paragraphs flagged with this icon, you’re still in good shape.

tip_4c.eps I’ve mined my wealth of sales experience for these gems to help make your closes successful without wasted time on the part of you or your customer.

warning_4c.eps This ticking time bomb alerts you to situations that can turn off a customer or cause you to lose the sale.

5minuteexercise.eps Spend a few minutes exercising your brain with the activities highlighted by this icon.

exploresomemore.eps When you see this icon, head to this book’s companion website, www.dummies.com/inaday/closingasale, to find more-detailed information about topics I cover in the book.

Chapter 1

Surveying the Anatomy of a Close

In This Chapter

arrow Clarifying just what closing is

arrow Observing customers’ verbal and visual buying signs

arrow Picking the perfect closing spot

arrow Employing the test close before segueing into your final close

One of the first things you have to do in the sales business is fall in love with selling; selling isn’t something you can be somewhat so-so about. To become a top producer in the sales field, you also have to devote time and attention to selling. Just as a gardener watches and studies his plants, you have to study your customers — observe their behaviors, watch for their buying signs, and evaluate their emotions.

This chapter offers you an overview of the most important part of the sales game: closing the sale. In it, you find out exactly what closing is (and what it isn’t), how to recognize customers’ buying signs, where you should close your sales, how to go about a test close, and how to seal the deal and get the customer’s 100-percent commitment to your product.

Defining Closing

Closing means different things to different people. For some, it’s simply taking an order or ringing up a sale on the cash register. For others, closing is the culmination of hours spent researching, planning, presenting, questioning, persuading, discovering, and finally helping the prospective buyer to own your offering.

In the following sections, I define closing — both what it isn’t and what it is.

What closing isn’t

You can often get a clear picture of what something is by knowing what it isn’t. So here’s what closing is not:

check.png Comfortable (in the beginning): Closing will be extremely uncomfortable for you at times, and I won’t promise that it gets a whole lot better the tenth time you do it. However, the more successes you experience, the more eager you’ll be to turn those no answers into yes answers.

check.png Magical: Some salespeople would have you believe that what they do is mystical and magical and that the ability to close is something you either have or you don’t have. Not so. Everyone has the ability to be a competent — even talented — closer. A certain personality type doesn’t close better than another. (Case in point: I’ve seen a very reserved, almost introverted salesperson be an incredible closer.) And the good closers aren’t always the 20-year veterans who’ve cornered the market on closing.

What closing is

Closing is all of the following:

check.png An art: Although closing isn’t magical, there is an art to it. Every word you say creates an image, either from memory or from experience. You construct a picture with your words, and you attempt to get your customers to catch your vision. How? Well, you appeal