A deal is not a deal until it is officially closed. Even if you are about to hand a prospect the pen, nothing is official until the contract is signed. In both B2B and B2C selling, closing deals requires a well-executed plan. In both cases, there are three essential components to closing a deal. Keep reading to learn how to make sure that pen hits the paper and prospects sign more often than not.
Identify and Solve a Real Problem
The first thing to remember is you are trying to identify and solve a real problem. Before you can sell a prospect on something, you must be able to identify a specific issue. While there are often many pains that should be addressed (i.e., missed opportunities, lost clients, internal chaos, etc.), it is important to find the root cause of their pain. Then, you can highlight how your product or service offers a solution to this problem.
Sometimes, prospective clients find themselves apprehensive about purchasing a solution when they cannot clearly identify the real issue. The easiest way to avoid this is to help the buyer in their search to find said problem. You know your product or service and its capabilities better than they do. So, why not make things easier on both sides and cooperate to find the main issue? From there, you can highlight how your product or services helps alleviate this source of pain.
Work with the Right People
The next thing to consider is making sure you are working with the right people. Rarely does the sales process begin and close with a single person. Oftentimes, there are multiple threads of conversation happening - from customers to sales and internal support to management to executives. Each persona has a different motivation and capacity to make decisions. For example, each persona has different access to allocating budget, selecting the product or service they need most, and making a final purchase decision.
By understanding these differences upfront, you can help ensure effective communication to those that need to hear it. Sellers must make sure they are speaking to the right people about the right things and not getting lost in a web of communication. Using each conversation to better understand the problem and organization can help lead to understanding which personas will be most important in securing a closed deal.
Communicate Appropriately
The third and final piece to keep in mind is to communicate appropriately. It is rare that deals are closed in one meeting, or even only a few for that matter. In fact, some sales cycles may last weeks or even months. So, even after you have identified which personas you are working with towards closing a deal, you must make sure you are communicating appropriately. What this means is a seller must maintain consistent and accurate communication across all channels at all times.
Having a reliable way of knowing who you are communicating with can help ensure slip ups do not happen. The last thing you want to do is send the wrong note to the wrong person on a team. Or even worse, send the wrong note to someone in a different company. Establishing concrete communication practices throughout the sales cycle can help ensure your communication stays accurate and appropriate no matter to whom it is going.
Closing Techniques
While three main components were just talked about, there is more to remember when closing a sale. Here is a quick list of both the main points and extra information about how you can be sure to close more deals:
- Avoid pressing hard for a hard close
- Know when the deal might not work
- Utilize your team and lean on their expertise
- Know who the final decision maker is
- Know the customer and their objections like the back of your hand
On top of this, it is also important to remember what type of sale you are looking to close. For example, you may take a more aggressive approach to a “scarcity close” which acts on a customer’s fear of missing out. Or, you may take a more open approach during a “puppy dog close”. There are many different types of closes, so understanding which one best fits your situation and prospect can help line you up for success.
Check out this Salesforce article to read more about different types of closes and things to remember throughout the sales process.
Bonus Tip: Salesvue
The last bonus tip we will leave you with is utilizing a sales engagement platform like Salesvue. These platforms help with a variety of sales process needs. Salesvue provides the technology needed to:
- Capture and record prospect information
- Track communications with customers and prospects
- Log sales calls, face-to-face meetings, and emails with a single click
- Access reliable reports to know how and when to best communicate with your prospect
- Use automated follow-ups and customizable campaigns to make sure that no lead or prospect goes untouched or falls off the radar
- Measure success rates based on a number of factors—from the campaign to the sales representative, the timing, the form of communication, etc.
Knowing what it takes to close a deal successfully allows you to create and replicate best practices to close more deals. When entire sales teams use these practices to close deals, sales leaders are more effective in forecasting as well. Better yet, Salesvue is Salesforce-native, meaning it lives directly inside of your Salesforce org. By acting as a single source of truth and being the only sales engagement platform that looks and feels like Salesforce, Salesvue is the perfect tool for teams that use Salesforce and want to take their sales efforts to the next level!
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