Do you ever wonder why some sales people crush their sales numbers consistently and others struggle to even achieve quota? You know, the thing is that sales breaks down essentially into two things. The first is what you do, and then the second is
how often you do it. And what I find is that
even sometimes sales people who are doing the same amount of activity, one sales person is
way more successful and way more effective than the other. So in this video we're
really going to isolate what you can be doing to make sure that you're closing more
sales than ever before. In this video I'm going to show you 17 easy closing sales tips. Check it out. Number one, stop being like others. It sounds obvious in some ways, but what I find is that
most sales people are doing some version of the same thing. They're getting in front of a prospect, they get all excited, they
pitch whatever it is that they can pitch, they start
to present all of the features and benefits that they can offer, and they maybe ask a couple of questions, and then go right back into
that presentation where they're doing the
majority of their talking. They're not giving their prospect a lot of opportunity to actually talk. They're not showing value,
they're not creating value. As a result, when they
start to use that closing question that they have been taught, the prospect says some
version of, you know what, I'm gonna think about it. And then they disappear
and they never get back. What I challenge you to
do is to stop being like those other people and to
use an approach that really focuses on having an
effective discovery up front. And when it comes to any
technique in selling, be willing to take your risks. Use a different approach
than what your coworkers or other competitors might be using. Number two, take risks with prospects. There is no more effective
approach than the higher risk approach with sales. And the reason for that is most sales people are unwilling to take risks. Human beings naturally are risk averse. There's a reason for that, right? Over millennia human
beings, the humans that are still here today are
here most likely because they didn't take lots of risks. They didn't jump in front of that lion and so they lived and thus,
their progeny went on. Humans have always been rewarded
for not taking huge risks. But in today's world,
particularly in selling, taking risks actually is going to give you the biggest rewards. Assuming they're calculated
risks and they're within a system, the
most willing you are to, the next time you think
a prospect is feeling a certain way or maybe they
just don't seem interested, just say it, say, George,
I get the sense that this doesn't really make
sense, is that fair? See what they say. A lot of times what's going
to happen is that risk will be rewarded with
them saying, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry, I wasn't
focused, I'm here though, I wanna hear what you have to say. Take those risks with prospects. Number three, get them talking. Some really, really powerful
data has just recently surfaced that the more a
prospect is actually talking during the discovery
conversation, the more likely that sales person is to
actually close the sale. We have always generally
understood this to be true, but now thanks to some
really powerful data, as a result of essentially
artificial intelligence through a company called Gong.IO we
now know for a fact that the sales people that are able
to get their prospects talking at length, and I mean the more, literally the higher the word
count is of the prospect, the more likely they
are to close the sale. So what we want to be
doing is understanding that the more we can get our
prospects really engaged in the conversation to start talking, the more likely we are to
actually make the sale. Get them talking. Get them to open up. Talking about the
challenges that they have, the business-related
concerns, not just the product focus questions but real
business-related concerns. The more you get them
going the more into the conversation they are and
the more likely they are to be receptive to the solution
that you have to offer. Number four, shut up. Now (laughs) it sounds really rude, and you're thinking to yourself, why the hell would I listen to this guy? The data, again, the flip
side of this data shows that the less sales
people are really talking, and by that I mean, not going
off on these long monologues, the more likely the sales person
is to actually close sales. The better we are at
getting our prospects really going and talking, the better off we are. And sometimes as sales
people we get really excited about our offering, we
get really excited about what it is that we have
to offer and all of the amazing solutions that we
have that we talk too much and we end up, before we
know it, we look back and we just talked for four
minutes straight with the sales person not saying anything. We need to break that
pattern and instead really focus on them, getting them going. And the less talking we're
doing, the more effective we are. Number five, nobody
cares about your company. Now again, a lot of new
data is coming out that shows that when sales people
talk about their company for too long it is highly correlative with negative outcomes in selling. And so, this basically means that your prospects don't care about your company. They don't care about all of
the awards that you've won, they don't care about
your management structure, they don't care about your CEO and all of the philanthropy that they do. They don't even care about how long your company's been around. What they care about is, does this sales person who works at this company, can this person solve the
challenges that I have? If it's not about them,
they don't care about it. Don't focus on your
company, don't focus on how you guys have the
best service and all that, what you wanna do is instead
focus your conversation to what are the key challenges
that they're looking to solve. What are the key objectives that they're looking to accomplish. And when you're focused on
that, now you're starting to build real value in the conversation. Number six, quit pitching. Pitching is a strategy that has been around forever in sales. It literally goes back to the NCR primer, which is National Cash
Register, they had their sales training philosophy which was
developed in the year 1887. Now, 1887 was a really long time ago. This is before any technology existed, and back then it really worked. The approach of the canned
pitch was super effective. But you know what, it's
been a lot of years since when this strategy really worked. And yet, so many sales
people are still using the pitching approach where they
get in front of a prospect and all they're doing is
pitching their product. It's not Shark Tank, right? In Shark Tank you want
to pitch effectively. But when you're in a selling situation, a one-on-one selling situation,
what you really want to do is engage prospects in conversations. Understand them, get them
talking, get them focused on the challenges that they're
looking to accomplish. Once you do that, then
you have fully understood through a proper discovery conversation, you've understood what's going on. Now you can present the challenges or the solutions to those challenges
that they're facing. But that comes a little bit later, it doesn't start with the pitch. Number seven, dig into challenges. Now I've already said this a
couple of times in this video, but we really, if we're to dig
into this issue a little bit, the idea is that we want
to really understand the key challenges that
our prospects are facing. And a challenge isn't, hey,
we're looking to generate $5 million or more in revenue, no. The challenge is, you know what, currently we're at $50
million in revenue and we really know that we should be at 55. And so, what's the
challenge that's causing them to not really get to that place? The challenge might go in further, digging more might be
that they just haven't had an effective marketing strategy. And now we wanna dig into that. What have they done,
what's going on there? The more we can dig into
those challenges that they're facing, pertaining
to whatever it is that you sell, of course, right? If you're an operational consultant, then we don't need to talk
about the marketing issues. But the more we can dig
into the key challenges, the more likely we are
to really understand what's going on, create
value, and then once we've created that value then
present the solutions. Number eight, disqualify the non-fits. This really goes against what a lot of people have been taught. I can't tell you how many
times I get on the phone with a VP of sales and they
want to bring me into their organization to speak to
their team, and they say, we want you to tell them to
never take no for an answer. And the first thing I think about is, why the hell would I tell them that? Why would you not take no for an answer? I'm not saying that we want
people to be pushovers. I'm not saying that we wanna just suddenly not care about the outcome of a sale. But, if a prospect is not a fit, we want to actually get rid
of them as soon as possible. Because I'll tell you a little secret. What separates the top
performers from everyone else is that they're spending, in many cases, the majority of their time in front of well-qualified prospects. And the only way that they're spending the majority of their time in
front of well-qualified prospects is that they
are disqualifying the people that are not a fit up front. If you're selling a $5 product, let's say you're selling pens, pretty much anyone's
qualified for your offer. So fine, but chances are
if you're watching this video you're not selling $5 pens. You're selling 50,000, $100,000 offerings, or maybe you're selling $20,000 kitchens, or you're selling a piece of software that over the course of a year with a large sized team could be $100,000 sale. These types of sales,
the real value sales, we need to get rid of all
those people that are not going to be a fit as
quickly as possible so that way we can focus on the
people that are a fit. Number nine, understand
the upside for them. This can be taken out of
context into saying that you should tell them the
ROI of working with you. And that's not what I'm saying at all. Now ROI is a really
valuable concept that we can use when selling,
but what we want to do is we don't want to tell
them what the ROI is. We want to help them say,
to help them understand what is the upside for them. So let me give you an example. I'll use my own world
because that's the easiest thing that I know, which is, let's say I'm talking to
the CEO of a company and the conversation is around developing
their sales organization. And so the conversation
that I would typically have, let's say it's a billion dollar company, and I say to the CEO, the CEO's
talking about his challenges or her challenges and
they're going through what's going on and I say, you
know what, if you were able to solve these challenges
what do you think that could mean in additional
revenue to the organization? He says, we could easily increase sales by another $50 million. That, my friends, is what you call upside. A billion dollar company
could easily increase sales by $50 million, which to them, by the way, is not a huge number necessarily. But in terms of my potential solution, $50 million is an absurd amount of money. That now is the upside of
solving those challenges, which by the way, they're talking, the CEO is talking to
me to help them solve. So the value in many ways of my offering is the fact that if
we're able to solve this, which in many cases we can, that means $50 million
in additional revenue. And then what we'd want to do, the real advanced person
would then dig into, what does $50 million mean in profit? Now we're really getting
into true bottom line. Talking to a CEO, what
they care about is profit. They don't even care about revenue as much as they care about profit. And so, getting to that, now that's getting a
little advanced but still, what we want to do is
understand the upside for them. Really get into what would solving these challenges mean to them. Even if you're selling kitchen cabinets. There's still an upside for
them that you don't wanna talk about, you wanna get
them talking about it. If you're able to fix these cabinets, what would it mean to your life? And they're like, oh, well we
would entertain people more, we would have people over,
it would be beautiful, it'd be something that
I could look at finally. That's the value that
you're offering bricks. Number 10, establish a budget
later on in the process. There is some really
incredible data that's been floating around now that I
just love that shows that most average and bottom performing
sales people are talking about price really early on
in the discovery process. Whereas, top performers
are waiting 'til about 45 minutes into that
initial discovery to really establish a budget, to
discuss pricing and budget. The difference is really, really big. The average people are
essentially leading with price, yet the top performers are
building value throughout the conversation, understanding
exactly what's going on with the prospect,
everything that's going on, and then getting and
establishing a real budget with a prospect later on
in the discovery process. The difference between
these two approaches is night and day, both for
the sales person in terms of the effectiveness and
likelihood of actually closing, but also for the prospect in
terms of their experience. Because it's not about the price, it's about is this person's
offering going to provide enough value that the
price that it's going to cost me is going to be
essentially inconsequential. We get to that, we're going
to close so many more sales. Establish the budget later
on the discovery process. Number 11, know their process. One of the biggest complaints
that prospects have about sales people is that the
sales person didn't take the time to really understand
their full buying process. And with big companies in particular, this is really one of
the key determinants of whether you're going to close that sale. Who's involved in the
decision-making process? What does their process
typically look like? What is the overall
approach that they would bring to making a decision like this? Understanding that whole
process is going to not only give you so much more insight
to make sure that you know what those steps look like
and so you have clarity and so that way you don't get
hit over the side of the head by something that you didn't see coming, it's going to help you
accomplish all that, but it's also going to
ensure that the prospect feels like they're really
driving the process. And by the way, this isn't
just true for big companies. This could also be if you're a realtor and you're talking to a
potential buyer for a house. What's their process for determining what kind of a house they want and then ultimately making that buying decision? The more we understand
their buying process, the more likely we are to
be much more successful and not get sidetracked and
not suddenly get that big, oh, you know what, I
gotta think about this, this isn't really, we're
not really ready to make a decision, and that kind of stuff. Know their process. Number 12, keep the presentation brief. There is so much data out
there that says that basically, bottom and average performers are spending so much more time in presentation mode, whereas top performers
are spending way more time in the discovery part of the conversation, and then the presentation
itself is actually pretty brief. The briefer and shorter
we keep this presentation, the more likely we are to be successful. Period. Just get out the key
points that you need to get in the presentation, and by the way, that is going to be based
on the challenges that they've discussed in that discovery. All you really need to
present are the solutions to the challenges that
they've already mentioned. Show that the offering
is going to help solve the challenges that they've
mentioned, and that's it. You don't have to give this
huge three hour presentation. It can be actually very short
and concise and to the point. Make sure that you keep it brief. Number 13, the 60 second rule. During the presentation, the
data shows that top performers essentially never go on
for more than about 70 seconds in a sales
presentation without reengaging the prospect back into the conversation. So if you look at a top
performer's sales conversation, even during the presentation,
it involves a lot of back and forth throughout
the conversation. And so, this led me to
create the 60 second rule, which basically says
that we never want to go on for more than 60
seconds without reengaging the prospect back into the conversation. We never wanna go on
for more than 60 seconds just going with our big monologue, and we think our speech is so slick, but in reality they're
already starting to lose interest because they're not
engaged in the conversation. A presentation should be a
dialogue, not a monologue. So follow that 60 second
rule, and if you start to see that, you know what,
I've been talking for awhile without reengaging the prospect
into this conversation, take a step back and reengage
them into the conversation. Number 14, feedback loops. A second ago you were
probably saying to yourself, well, how do I reengage
them in the conversation? Well, that's what a
feedback loop is all about. A feedback loop is all about
reengaging the prospect back into the conversation
and making sure that you really still have their attention. Making sure that they really do think that what you're saying makes sense. And so, a feedback loop
is something as simple as a question like, does that make sense? Or, does that work for you? Little questions, or even
something like, is that okay? Whatever it is, what
we want to be doing is pulling them back into the conversation. So that way when we've
gone on for, let's say, 30 seconds talking about
one particular solution that we have, we bring 'em
back into the conversation. Does that make sense? See, I did it and you
probably initially thought to yourself, yeah, yeah,
it does make sense. That's how powerful feedback loops are. We can use these constantly. Top sales performers are using questions, little feedback loops
like that, 50, 60, 70 times in a conversation
during a presentation to make sure they're
reengaging the prospect. Your prospect isn't
gonna say to themselves, oh, they're using feedback loops on me. No, what they're going to think is, wow, I'm really on the
same page with this person. Cool? Number 15, stop closing. The data shows that closing doesn't work. The closing techniques
don't matter anymore. What matters is is that we
were really, really strong in the discovery process
so that way when it comes time to the close it just happens. It's just, George, what
would you like to do next? And we really figured out
all of the steps in between. So if you've been strong
in the discovery process, you've given them a
presentation that is really based on the challenges that they've had, and it's really showing
that it's going to solve them in a way that makes sense to them, the close just naturally happens. We don't need these
fancy closing techniques. It still baffles me
that sales trainers are still using hardcore
closing techniques that ultimately are making the
prospect pretty uncomfortable. Stop closing, and just
make sure that you're really strong up front
so that way by the time you get to the close it just happens. There doesn't have to be some
magic silver bullet question. It just happens. Number 16, clear and scheduled next steps. This is something that in
today's world is so important. Chances are you are not in
one call close situations. I very rarely come across
sales people who are getting a prospect on the
phone or getting in front of a prospect and they
truly expect that they're going to close that prospect
right then and there. It does happen, but in reality, most of us are selling
offerings that are more complex and require multiple steps
in order to close the sale. And that being the case,
we need to be sure that we live by clear and scheduled next steps. So that means that every
single interaction with a prospect ends with a a clear
and scheduled next step. And so that means that someone
took out their calendar, the prospect literally
took out their calendar, and they said, yep, okay,
I'm free to talk at this time at this location and we're gonna talk about this and it's in my calendar. And a calendar invite went out and they accepted the calendar invite. Everything is clear and scheduled. You never want to end a
conversation with a prospect without a clear and
scheduled next step, ever. And by the way, if they're
unwilling to schedule next steps, chances are it means that
they really don't want to have that next step with you anyways. So we wanna make sure, we
almost wanna see this as a test. Are they willing to put a
next step in their calendar? And if they are, now you're
on track and you're not gonna see it just fall apart in that
confused never never land. Number 17, S W cubed N. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, what the heck does S W cubed N mean? It's very simple. What it stands for is, some
will, some won't, so what, next. This phrase has been around forever. And I couldn't love it more
today than I loved it the first time I heard it
because it is so damn true. Some will, some won't, so what, next. It's not a big deal. So often in sales we come
across these problems and we come across these
prospects and we come across these situations
and we freak out and we're like oh my God, it fell
apart and I did this wrong, or they responded this way
and I'm so angry at them. You know what, take a deep breath. Some prospects are gonna close. Some prospects aren't going to close. And you know what, so what? And if they turn out to be a
knucklehead, move on, next. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day,
sales is about numbers. It is about behaviors. It's about doing the
right things when you're doing those behaviors,
but it is about numbers. So don't ever take one
particular situation and extrapolate that like that is the biggest problem that I'm facing. It just doesn't matter. Some will, some won't, so what, next. There are 17 easy closing sales tips. I wanna hear from you. Which of these ideas do
you find most useful. Be sure to share below
in the comment section to get involved in the conversation. If you enjoyed this video,
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