One Call Closing

Well, let's begin with a premise. Most salespeople don't know or do this. From our prospects:

YES is acceptable.

NO is acceptable.

THINK IT OVER is unacceptable.

The reason why I personally don't talk much about closing is this: that's powerful information. This is what people become clients of mine for. Would you like to become a client? (By the way, the last two sentences I just gave you are a close all by themselves.) I give out lots of tactics on prospecting, which is a huge part of your success in Sales, and doctoring for pain.

I will, however, give you all a look at a PM I sent to a fellow Warrior at around 5AM this morning. The forum has a character limit on posts, so I'll have to give it to you in two sequential segments. Here it is:

About your question, whether to present proposals at the end of your first visit, or go back and present at a second appointment:

"It depends" :rolleyes:

Let me give you more of the consultative selling process (gawd, there's more--but you'll see that if I tried to dump all of this on you at once, it would be overwhelming...you have to see how the parts work together):

Every step of the way you want to get commitment from your prospect. These are "If I do this, then you'll do that" agreements. They start off small (remember that little "Let me take a quick minute and tell you why I called, and then you can decide if we should talk further or not?" agreement at the beginning of your prospecting calls?) and work their way up in magnitude to "If I show you exactly how I can solve your pain problem, in the way you wan to be shown, then you'll tell me today whether we're going ahead or not."

The analogy I've come up with about how this works in practice is that these agreements work the same way climbers tackle Mount Everest. If you haven't read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" , I recommend you get one from the library or buy a 1 cent paperpack copy (with shipping it'll be a whopping $4.00 grand total). I read it 10 years ago and it's stuck with me...as a matter of fact, I just paused writing this to go see if my local library has it (they do--or I would have bought a copy from Amazon). I'll bet you think climbers of huge peaks like Everest go straight up the mountain, right?

Wrong. They ascend in stages. If I remember correctly, they do Everest in four camps in "Into Thin Air." So the climbers come up to base camp, which I think is at 18,000 feet. They acclimatize. One of the big problems of climbing big mountains is that the oxygen disappears from the air, and your body starts to die as you ascend. Some people just can't handle this, and get sick. At that point it's life-threatening and they can't continue.

So to find out how individuals' bodies are going to react, the climbers go up in teams and in stages. They go up to camp one, spend some time there, and come back down to base camp. If anyone gets sick at camp one, that person gets sent back to civilization. Then the team goes up to camp two, which is naturally even higher. They spend some time there to find out who gets sick, and then return to base, and so on. Eventually the remaining team members who didn't get sick can go up to the peak. Note how they're going over the same ground several times, re-confirming what they're doing.

Now the thing that nearly all the climbers will tell you is this: "Anyone can get to the top of Everest. The hard part is making it back down alive." If you read the book, you'll find out why.

(stay tuned for Part 2)

(part 2)

The analogy is perfect. At each step of the selling process, you must re-assert those "If-Then" agreements. If you can't get these, it's like you didn't acclimatize to Camp Three, got sick and must return to civilization: you won't make the sale.

So starting at the end of your prospecting call, when you've gotten some pain on the table and they agree to see you, you say: "Let me take a moment to share how these meetings usually go. We'll meet for about an hour. I'll have a lot of questions for you, and I'm sure you'll have questions for me. At the end of about 40 minutes, we should both know whether there's anything I can do to help you or not. If it turns out we're not a fit, that's okay. If we do agree that I can help you, we'll figure out what that looks like then. Does this make sense?"

and when you meet them in person, you reiterate this same thing: "Thanks for inviting me in." Oh, yes, inviting you in. Who do we invite in? Guests! They're going to treat you better simply by saying this! "I want to take a quick minute and go over what we'll be doing here today. We'll sit down and talk about your business for about an hour. I'll have a lot of questions for you...and I'm sure you'll have questions for me. At the end of our discussion, we'll both know whether or not I can do anything for you; if not, that's all right. Neither of us will be mad at the other. If so, then we'll figure out what that might look like then. Does this make sense?"

and it's always helpful to ask, "Has anything changed that I need to know about today?" Sometimes, even though you scheduled an hour, they have changed the time available to much less. It's imperative that you know about this prior to starting! There are lots of stories about this happening, and the salesperson wasting all of their time in the first half-hour, and then discovering that Time's Up! and they didn't accomplish anything. Trust me, prospects want to change things all the time and not tell you about it.

Okay, back to the Everest analogy. This up front contract is one of those agreements that gets you to the next camp. So it depends on how much time they have for you, how much discussion you're able to have, and how completely you end up understanding their world by the end of that first appointment. If you haven't reached the summit, then you'll have to ask for extra time--today or another day. There's no way you can propose anything otherwise.

Now the creepy thing about climbing Everest is that, up high, the air doesn't support life. That means there's no bacteria in the air to break down dead things...and so the junk and frozen bodies of those who've died there stay there. This is a perfect metaphor for the memory of failed sales attempts that stick in the mind of you and the prospect! (Another reason to ask "Have you tried fixing this before? What happened? Oh look, there's Joey the other sales guy and his failed attempt over there.")

Keep the Everest analogy in mind as you meet with your prospect. If you know by your process (doctoring for pain, honest sharing by the prospect and their agreement that the problem really does exist, uncovering the true budget etc.) that you've climbed safely to the summit, then you may give a proposal. Otherwise, you'll have to schedule more time to discuss the problem further. Or the sale will die on the mountain.

You DO want to get them with their enthusiasm and interest at its highest level, so do your best to get their agreement as soon as possible that if you show them your solution, the way that they want to be shown, then they will tell you today whether the project is a Go or not (and present your proposal). I mean, at the appropriate time in the process. Do Not bring this up or say anything like this until AFTER you've done all the other steps.

Does this make sense? The more you use this, the more natural it will seem to you. I know it seems like there's a lot to remember right now, but it's actually straightforward and after awhile it'll be second nature and you won't even have to think about it much. If you have any questions about these ideas please let me know.

I see how you could visualize the analogy that way. From my angle, climbing mountains is Fun! Adventurous! Exciting! And Sales IS a very delicate, uncertain thing: one mistake *can* send you tumbling off a cliff. That danger can be part of what makes it fun.

Also, by rushing to the end, I think you're skipping the budget step, and the personality fit. And that all these steps are in fact *part of the closing process!* My post was all about closing. Consultative selling doesn't use a traditional closing technique. The way it works is that the prospect sells themselves. You don't have to spend a lot of time on this: as soon as you have enough knowledge in each stage, you can move on to the next. The whole process can easily be done in 40 minutes.

You don't want to end up with buyer's remorse, where they call and cancel the order. You also don't want a bad fit.

Now you may be a pretty advanced salesperson, but most people are not. They're like I used to be, what I call a "sales zombie": wandering around, doing things by the seat of their pants, not sure why they succeed sometimes and fail others.

Closing, this way, is about removing objections like price, technical features and delivery issues by uncovering urgent, emotional pain that needs to be solved. The entire process is a lead-up to that. I provided readers with the close:

"If I show you how we solve your issue, the way you want to be shown, then you agree to tell me TODAY whether you say Yes or No." Think It Overs are unacceptable. If they do that to you, then it's a No because eventually, after a drawn-out process where the prospect hides and shops around to find what you offer at the cheapest price, they'll tell you No anyway.

They can ask you to leave the room while they discuss your proposal, or give you an answer by 5PM, for example.

I disagree that getting agreement on issues is the "Yes Yes" approach. THEY are not agreeing with YOU about reasons for buying: YOU are discovering if THEIR reasons for needing change are things that you can do something about. But I completely agree with you about getting the prospect to ask you for the order! That's effective--no price objection, no objections at all. Much easier. So if the price to you is that you must follow a process, and it takes a little longer, so be it. The major cause of failure in Sales is in fact rushing--ask other sales trainers.

Most salespeople get caught up in trying to wrestle their prospect to the ground making them buy every feature & benefit their product or service provides. I suggest that you find out what your prospect wants to buy, and sell them that portion of what your solution does. Educate them after the sale about every other wonderful thing it does. Comments?

Im a one call closer by profession. If you ask questions and get commitments, knowing that your going to get a "think about it" at the end, then you can go back and talk about the commitments he gave you.

Its always about price anyway,so on a one call close, you have to give him a reason to say yes, now.

eg.
You: sounds like your business could really this, out side of price is there any reason we cant start today?(pre-close)
Him: no(anything else then your presentation needs work)

Give price...

him: I'll think about it(hes prob. fishing for discount anyway)
You: Thats fine you should think about it, let me ask you when do you think you'll be ready to do this?(releives pressure of him telling you no)
Him: Next week
You: Ok great, now you said before that your business needs something like this right?(go over all the commitments he made to you)
Him: right
You: Ok are you thinking about having someone else do this or is a little more then what you thought it was going to be?
him: yeah its price
You: ok if i can make this affordable could we get started today?
Him: ok how
You: if we start this today I can take $XXX off today and you can pay half now and balance on end or make monthly payments of $xxx for 12 months, which would be best for you? (write this on paper for him)

Flightrisk, regardless of agreeing or not agreeing with your approach, your post is about CLOSING! Thanks so much for that. It's all about what happens once that curtain is pulled back and it's time to ask for the order.

I don't disagree with consultative selling in any way. But, when all is said and done, "thinking it over" is a knee jerk reaction from just about anyone when they are asked for a decision.

I don't know what you sell, but out of curiosity, what percentage of sales happens after the first call?

If things seem to have stalled, and although the prospect appeared to like everything and hasn't voiced any objections...but the project isn't going forward...ask your your prospect:

"It seems like you like everything we're talked about. But I feel that this project is stalled. I'm not sure what we should do here. What would you suggest?"

That's a great tactic....well worth adding to anyone's bag-0-tricks

Do you, dear reader, have a question about a specific of closing you'd like to ask?

I agree, it is a process. From time to time I get a one call close, just because everything lines up, it's fun, but not really that big of a deal in the big picture if you factor in how infrequently it happens.

When you're selling to another business, your prospect will understand that you don't want to leave work to drive out to their location to meet with them. They are the same way, if they're business people.

Don't be afraid to ask questions on the phone. Especially the most important one -- asking for the order.

Don't feed the lefty troll(s).

Duplicate account, maybe?

Ken, I think it's a duplicate account, that's all. Reported. This was a fine thread until that started.

What'd I miss?

David,

When I first got into sales I certainly didn't know how to close. But there
was no second option. So I sat there, their supper getting cold, all 250
pounds of me. Always smiling, always pleasant. Nobody would throw me
out, so I knew if I sat there long enough, they would buy just to get me
out. So they could eat or go to bed, whatever.

I invented my own "First Call Close."

Hugh

Good advise. This puts pressure on the propect to answer, but it also puts pressure on you, the salesman, to wait until they have answered and this is where a lot of us mess up,we talk first thus releaving the pressure and in many cases the sale.

Get them to keep saying YES.

It's very very very rare for me to make a one call close. The one call closes I do remember have been problem deals for me as well.

I don't know if I can distill years of experience into one paragraph,
but here goes. Buying anything is an emotional experience. You have
got to paint mental images of the prospect owning your product. You
have to get him drooling over the thought of owning your product.
A the right moment, you start nodding "Yes" while making a point.
Whether it's the first time or the 14th time, if he nods when I do,
I ask the closing question and will not utter a sound until he answers
my closing question. I keep this up until be either buys or make a
definitive statement that he will not buy. I either close on first call,
or he doesn't buy from me.

Hugh

"Then let's get started"
or
"I'll need your check number"
or
"Red or Blue?"

Not always a question, but moving the process forward.

Hugh