Are You Mentally Ready to Close the Sale?

As salespeople, we love the thrill of the chase and the dopamine hit of the close. All the sales training, prospect finding, door knocking, phone calling, rapport building and following up is leading us to the ultimate goal of the close. It ain’t always easy, but it’s why we do what we do. Here, we offer you the steps our sales trainers recommend to achieving a smooth customer journey and more often than not, successful close.

If you build it, they will come

Sure the chase is thrilling, and closing is the end goal, but to be a great salesperson you’ve got to love being around and building relationships with people. Your customers shouldn’t be seen as numbers, and they aren’t just a stepping stone to your next bonus. If you’ve done any sales training you will know that rapport building is essential to gaining trust with your prospects.

In our previous blog, we talked about creating a personal connection by asking rapport-building questions around your prospect’s place of work, job and education. This will help you to understand their personality and to build knowledge on how to communicate effectively. Each call or meeting you have with a prospect is an opportunity to reference these previous conversations and to ask follow up questions. Each call or contact point is a building block to creating a successful relationship with your client.

Be the solution to their problem

By asking the right questions and building a trusting relationship with your prospect you’ve helped them to realise they have a problem that needs solving. Sounds a bit cynical right? Creating a problem that wasn’t there, only to solve it? Wrong. Products and services were created to solve problems and make people’s lives better, easier, happier (insert positive adjective here). Your job is to know your prospect’s needs and help them understand how your product can service those needs.

Confidence is key

For a salesperson, rejection is an occupational hazard. As salespeople, we need to feel the fear and do it anyway. If animals can sense our fear, so can humans sense apprehension and uncertainty in a salesperson. Signs of weakness or lack of conviction can eliminate your chance of closing the sale.

Luckily confidence is a skill, one that can be taught and learnt. Building strong relationships with your customers will help you feel confident in your abilities. But to do that, you have to understand yourself and be aware of your strengths and weaknesses. Undertaking additional sales training or seeking out a sales coach as a mentor is a great way to work on your self-confidence.

You also have to be certain that you can offer value with your product or service and you must always be prepared in any interaction with your clients. Knowledge is power! So always do your homework.

Belief in yourself, your brand, and your client are the three ingredients imperative to solidifying a mutually beneficial long-term relationship with your clients.

Follow up and close

Ask any qualified sales trainer and they will tell you that your close rate is based almost entirely on your ability to follow up. There is no one exact formula you should use to follow up, you just have to make sure you say as you do and you do as you say.

You’ve sent a proposal to your prospect and heard nothing? Send them a follow up email to check that they’ve received it. They’ve received it and let you know they’ll get back to you but you’ve heard nothing? Contact them again and ask if they have any questions. They’ve told you they need a couple of weeks to think about it. Put it in your diary and call them in a couple of weeks. Every customer contact is an opportunity to build trust and edge closer to the closing conversation.

Are you ready?

You’re finally here… all your sales training, question asking, relationship building and prospect massaging has brought you to the moment you’ve been working so hard towards, the close. But are you ready?

Thanks for reading this blog on “Close The Sale”. See more on our sales coaching training