The other day I read an article by Tom Callinan titled “Close More Sales” on The Week in Imaging. I found the article enjoyable and a good read, in closing the article Tom presented this paragraph.
How do you actually close more sales? That’s easy; uncovering a solid business case by asking great questions, listening attentively, and focusing on moving the sale forward with every meeting. The best closers are those that spend their time to uncover specific issues their product or service will alleviate, and understands the precise value of addressing those issues before they ever move to their proof source. After you’ve uncovered a quantifiable business case and you’ve proven that your product or service can address that business case closing will be as easy as “It seems like it make sense to move forward with the (your product or service) acquisition/ installation, doesn’t it?”
I agree with everything above, what I don’t agree is that this will help you close more sales, it will help you close a sale. For those of us in the business long enough we know that WE CAN’T close every opportunity. There will be those appointments where you can be the best listener, you can ask great questions, you can uncover those specific issues, but you’re just not going to get that deal for whatever the reason. It could be price, value, a cousin pops up who is in the business, a neighbor is a friend of the CFO who has a guy…the list goes on and on.
The key to closing more sales is to have a bounty of opportunities and follow what Tom pointed out with every appointment. Let me put it this way, if your quota is $60K per month, you need three times that in opportunities that may close that month. That’s $180K worth of potential business every month; if you don’t have three times you quota in the monthly pipeline you won’t close more sales.
This month alone I had two opportunities that went by the wayside, one I lost and that opportunity was over $70K and the other was put on the back burner for a few months and that opportunity was $42K. That’s $112K lost. Fortunately I still have another $60K that still may be able to close this month.
Many reps, especially new reps, will have a few good months or a few good quarters and then they’ll relax, thus the activity will drop (which includes calls, e-mails, mailers, stop ins). When the activity drops then so does the opportunities.
My belief is that you need to generate 3-5 opportunities each week to close more sales. We’ll lose a lot of them, but we’ll also take our fair share also.
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Good selling!
