Old school sales trainers tell you to “focus 80% of your efforts on the close because that’s where the money is made.”
You'll often hear the rough and tumble "hardcore closers" tell you "coffee is for closers." How exhausting and how 1980’s.
That quote is from the 1992 movie "Glengarry Glen Ross," which was based on the 1984 play by David Mamet of the same name.
So Mamet was 37 when he wrote that play and I'm going to make an educated guess that it took him a year or two to write the play and that it was based on some personal experience with salespeople in his 20's and 30's, which makes the source of this quote somwhere between 33 and 43 years old.
If you're not driving a 40 year old car for your daily commuter or wearing the same bellbottom jeans from 40 years ago or using the same puke green refrigerator from your childhood...why are you still using the same old closing techniques?
(Now do you understand why sales is hard for you?)
There are two types of sales:
- The easy ones, and
- Those you don’t get.
If you’re getting a lot of objections it means you’re either
- Talking to the wrong people, or
- Telegraphing / inviting objections with your weak words.
When you spend more time sorting, sifting, and separating you’ll spend less time with tire-kickers and more time with qualified buyers who want, need, and can afford what you offer.
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That being said, you may still get what appears to be an objection from time to time but be sure it is truly an objection vs the prospect just sounding things out.
There’s an adage in sales that you shouldn’t answer an un-asked question.
For example, if a prospect says “You’re more expensive than ABC company,” reply with “Yes we are.”
They didn’t ask a question.
They made a statement.
Maybe they are frustrated but why are they frustrated? They are frustrated because they want your offering but can’t yet justify the cost, which means you haven’t done a good enough job of showing the value.
Now if you are obviously more expensive—you sell BMWs and they say “you’re more expensive than the Toyota—then you need to reply with
Yes we are, but you already knew that and you came here on purpose so let me ask you, what is the Toyota lacking that you’re hoping to find in your BMW?
Whoever is asking the questions is in control of the conversation, which is why I turned it around and forced the prospect to dig deep and really answer for themselves—not for me—why they want the BMW.
Our prospects must always sell themselves. We are simply the facilitators to the truth.
So work on opening better so you don’t have to close at all.
When you are selling correctly the prospect will simply ask, “How do we get started?”
That’s when you know you’re selling correctly.
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Market like you mean it.
Now go sell something.
