Effective sales closing techniques – “Sales is not about selling a product, it’s about solving a problem.”
Generally, sales involve four steps:
- Gaining the trust of the client. It’s the most crucial part and plays a 40% role in closing the sales process, Generally, the sales process made by referrals gets closed successfully more compared to the outbound sales or inbound sales. We’ll discuss more it later in this post.
- You as a service provider must understand the need and burning desires of the client. Without the needs you can’t make a great sales pitch with confidence, rather you will hesitate to answer the questions of the client. So be ready with thorough research about the client’s loopholes, why they are lacking behind, what their competitors are doing, and where they can focus to grow more and generate more revenue. You have to think and understand from the perspective of your client. It plays 30% of the sales process.
- You must have your solutions or answers ready. This comes from years of experience dealing with problems, and questions and plays another 20% of the sales process.
- Closing the sales finally is the fourth step, It should happen quickly with effective preventive measures to ensure that sales is closed with mutual agreements and understanding.
Sales can be divided into 7 Parts to make it easy to understand.
- Prospecting: Finding the right prospects or the list of clients is the first step of the sales process.. Generally, we can consider it as the data gathering or collecting step, where we collect or find the contact details such as phone numbers, email ids, addresses and websites of the prospective clients. You must understand their services and their prices and reconsider as if they are able to buy your services or not. You must fix a meeting with a client when he or she is able or in a situation or position where he or she can afford your services.
- Preparation: After prospecting the preparation process begins to evaluate the options or kind of services you can offer to the client which can benefit him in his business to grow exponentially. This preparation also includes getting ready to approach the client through the digital medium if he or she is away or from abroad, or for a personal meeting if he or she is a local client.
- Approach: Now you approach the client. It’s simple. But before that, you have to keep a lot of things handy. Your branding must be clear. You must have your business cards, Your company brochure if any, your website or application, your mindset, your questions and answers, your estimated quote for the service etc. if it’s an online meeting, you can start with a cold email or a WhatsApp broadcast through WhatsApp API or with Direct DM on the social media pages or profiles of the client. There is ‘n’ a number of ways to approach a client online.
- Presentation: Here in this stage you have acquired a client from the lead generation process or through a direct approach or referrals and you are meeting the client for the first time. Here the presentation terms are referred to in the PowerPoint or keynote presentation. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that. You should be able to actively listen to what the client is saying or asking and eventually after he completes you should respond with effective straight forwards answers or solutions, remember not to present any diplomatic or philosophical answers to the questions asked by the client. Be practical. Don’t act like a smart-ass guy. Because the client is already smarter than you. We will talk about presentation and personal aesthetics later in this post pointwise.
- Handling Objections: Sales pitching is a continuous process, a game to master. You shall be able to surround the client from all around the corner. Well to make it short when the client rejects you or makes another meeting or avoids your call or not so active about the project or not listening carefully, never try to judge them for their present behaviour, they are the owners of big businesses. And they can be in any mood. So never take any rejections personally. Sales is a one-time success in multiple rejections. You should be focussed on your sales only. You should never be pessimistic in your mind, an optimistic vision, and thought can make your client cooler, calmer and attract towards your pitch.
- Closing the Deal: As this is the ultimate goal of the sales process, an end goal is to make the client sign the invoice and take the payment of the advance. By hook or by crook it’s the task of the sales manager or the staff to make the client sign the cheque. If he is not ready you can lure him by giving some discounts or offering some extra services for free or a discounted price, or you can make your service exclusive for a limited period of time, or you can say like your services are going to be costly from the next month onwards etc. If the client is really got interested in your sales pitch he or she will definitely close the deal. You should be able to make him or her realise that the amount he’s spending on it, he is gonna recover at least 2 to 3x every month at least.
- Follow Up: Once the sales process is done, the process is not over. You must commit to maintaining a continuous relationship. That customer shall be able to generate referrals in the future. Continuous content emails, personal messages and wishes, and a healthy professional relationship are required to maintain and have a lifetime value.
Let’s discuss some personal Effective sales closing techniques before visiting the clients…
- While the responsibility is on your head to make the sale happen in any way but never to dupe or make any fraud your client with any false promises or misleading information.
- Being ambitious is very good, Behave like an entrepreneur not as a salesman.
- An effective sales manager always believes in learning new market trends, demands, and supply chains. You should be able to fulfil the client’s demands. Not only with his services but he should genuinely try to make the client happy with good service.
- There can be many questions on how to find the right prospects. The answer is very simple. In the digital era of the 21st century, finding the right client with contact details online is very easy and less time-consuming. It’s just that the rate of replies from your clients will be somewhere around 5 to 7%.
- You can also work on SEO, Ads, Face to face visits to make appointments. But the third one is not recommended at all in digital marketing.
- Always try to go with a pen and paper to note the queries, and requirements of the client so that you will be able to research and recollect about them later.
- Content marketing is the best and most free way to get new clients who are interested in your services and have built trust in you and want to spend. So then never hesitate to grab the opportunity to charge the right amount for that service.
- Great business in Digital marketing happens with Referrals. Try to provide the best services so that you will get referrals in the future. I have seen that 90% of the work I have done in the past has come from referrals. It’s the best way to keep generating revenue until or unless you are providing the best-class service to your clients.
- Before charging your clients, always consider the cost-benefit ratio from the perspective of your client. If you are charging more and he’s going to get nothing out of this then you should rethink it. But when you are charging less and he’s gonna have a blast of revenues, then try increasing your budget.
- Generally, companies prefer to spend 8% to 9% in their marketing budget, so try to evaluate on the basis of that.
- While providing B2B services can approach directly to the client through the above models, B2C services or products must be advertised or promoted online only.
- You must be able to answer all the basic questions of the client, at least about the service or product that you are going to provide to him or her.
- Understanding the SWOT analysis of the client and his company is very much important.
- Write down every new learning, solution, result, and experience to be able to provide better services in the future.
- Your time is limited, You can afford to approach a lot of customers, and try to find the precise clients with good ROI.
- Never take any rejections personally, Because rejections are very common in sales. In the first 30 seconds, the customer can decide if he is going to buy or not. You should look or act or communicate professionally.
- In personal one on one meetings using good quality deodorants is always preferred.
- Wear good clothes, not necessarily T-Shirts or expensive formal coats. You must fix the clothes according to the meeting or the client type. Keep the jewellery as simple as possible. Maintain good personal grooming, Clean shaving is recommended but optional. Personal hygiene is very much important.
- Your posture should be professional and polite.
- You have an office location then try to maintain it accordingly because the clients can visit anytime and it should look aesthetically pleasing according to your brand and its colours and positioning.
- Do take care of your vocabulary,
- LSRW (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) is very important for effective communication. Right Pitch, tones, volumes, and voice also do play a great role in it.
I have learned a lot from this video from Sahil Khanna, one of my online mentors in marketing and business. Do watch his video to become a super salesman in just 1 hour!
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