Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector
Welcome to the latest weekly episode of Peady’s Selling Engagement, now available in living audio via Branded Podcasts.
In this episode entitled How to Improve Your Closing , Stephen Pead talks about how you can to improve your closing by knowing and using customer expectations. In other words, responding to the needs of the people who really make the decision.
To listen to the PODCAST go HERE.
How to Improve Your Closing
You can increase the chances of closing sales by understanding customers’ buying processes as well as the major factors that affect their buying decisions. But it’s equally important to avoid the mistakes that most customers find objectionable. This is a pretty interesting concept when you consider that 99% of salespeople are trying to figure out some manipulative way of closing the sale or asking for the sale.
The key points of this podcast come from an article called The Customer-Driven Sales Organization: Customers Describe How to Win, Keep and Grow Their Business. The article refers to research in which customers are asked to identify what sales people do that helps their buying process.
The headline feedback is really interesting as more than 80% of the responses mentioned these six practices:
1. Listen and respond to my needs. In other words, don’t sell me your product, solve my problem.
2. Present solutions honestly and simply. Please don’t try to dazzle me or make your product or service look better by putting down your competition.
3. Follow up faithfully. Stay in contact with phone calls and emails. Use touchpoints to build the relationship
4. Respect my buying process. Really get to know me and my company as well as you know your product.
5. Persistence and regular contact. Be persistent but without being pushy – maintain the information flow
6. Demonstrate value. Understand the difference between features and benefits to effectively demonstrate your product’s value to me.
These are the top 6 responses from 8 out of 10 businesses – that’s huge and most of it is “selling 101”. The problem is most sales people don’t know what to do as they don’t know what their customer’s needs, wants or expectations are.
How about you?
Until next time good selling.
About the author
Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.
He can be contacted at [email protected]
