How to Close the Sale - Part 3: Top 5 Steps to Close the Sale

The Top 5 Steps to Close the Sale

Long, drawn-out transactions result in lower profits, poor customer satisfaction, and most definitely keeping you from closing the sale.

In the last article of the “How to Close the Sale” series, we discussed that to be successful in how to close the sale you must research and rehearse to close. This time I’ll give you five steps that business people have used to see improvements in customer satisfaction, employee turnover, and increased gross profits. Your sales process should be no more than 5-6 customer valued steps and 30-45 minutes at the most.

Here are the Top 5 Steps to Close the Sale:

1. The Greeting should be 30 seconds or less - initiate the offer of providing the buyer with information. Why wait for the customer to ask? Offer it and separate yourself from the ‘caveman’ down the street. A powerful greeting would be, “Welcome to __________ what can I get you information on?” This makes it known from the beginning that what you’re representing is friendly and easy and that the sales person is able to assist the customer in providing pricing, payments, down payments, interest rates, and all other information in order to close the sale.

2. Move Up, Not Down when it comes to price! Most sales people offer a lower price when they get an objection from the customer about price. The truth is when you move down on the price, the customer is actually less likely to want what you’re selling. When you move up in price, you’ll have him or her thinking in terms of value and discover if their original objection was really valid or not.

3. Present your proposal. We recently did a mystery shop for a major manufacturer and found that 64% of the time the sales person did NOT offer figures for the final purchase of their product. If you don’t enter the negotiations, the buyer CANNOT buy your product resulting in a wasted effort, resources, and advertising dollars. Why try and sell something if you’re not actually going to sell it?

4. Stand to Lose. Sit to Close. I can almost guarantee that you will not close a deal if you are standing up. Instead, you should sit your customer down and present to him or her what you can do in terms of service and back it up with facts on the product. Remember to sell your customer on emotion but close him or her on facts and figures. Put it on paper, on your computer monitor, some place visualso that they can actually see it with their own eyes. You customer will believe what they see rather than just what they hear so sit them down and close the sale.

5. Close or Exit. Closing is EVERYTHING. Sales people that cannot close will not do the other things necessary to be successful. This economy is a closer’s environment not a sales environment. Make everything easy and transparent using electronic generated worksheets that can be CUSTOMIZED to fit different buyer situations. (Warning- do NOT use one worksheet for all buyers.) If you are unable to close the transaction, then make sure that your buyer exits with information packages and a manager using an exit survey. This way, you have a foundation you’ve created to help you close the deal better if that customer comes back.

I guarantee that if you follow these 5 steps, they will help you close that sale. In thenext part of the “How to Close the Sale” series, I’ll be discussing probably the most important thing you’ve got to close on in order to close the sale, that one thing… is YOU.

Close the Sale - The Able Close