Closing the Sale: The 3 Mistakes That Are Losing You Deals
Closing the sale can be one of the trickiest parts of the sales process.
This is especially true if you make a few key mistakes and don’t use effective sales techniques.
You’ve worked really hard to get tons of new people looking at your website. The effort pays off and all of those great leads start flowing in. Now the most important part takes place.
You have to turn those leads into sales. Unfortunately, this is the part at which most entrepreneurs fail miserably. Most small business owners have expertise in their own industry, but they don’t often have a lot of first-hand experience in how to close sales.
This is especially true when they are first starting out and still experimenting with the right sales technique.
Below are some of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make in the follow-up process. These mistakes can keep them from closing the sale. Avoid them, and you will increase your closing ratio dramatically and turn more leads into sales.
Mistake #1: Thinking that All of Your Leads are Ready to Buy Right Now
Remember that people can search you out and have a challenge or a problem. It doesn’t mean they will be ready to buy right now. However, you can use different methods to stay in your prospect’s mind as a potential service or product down the line.
You should keep in touch with them, avoid pressuring them to buy, and continue to educate them. Key decision-makers will often come to you when they are ready to buy.
There should be sales strategies in place to ensure you, or a sales rep from your team, can meet customer needs during the sales cycle. You will want to provide information for potential clients that helps them solve their problems, build a relationship with these potential clients, and follow up until they are able to make a final decision.
It is a process, and in every step of the process, you may run into common objections. However, the trust level between you and your potential client should grow as well. Keep these different closing techniques in mind to create the best solution for the prospect, which in turn will increase your close rate.
Granted, though, if you are getting thousands of leads every month, it will be impossible to follow up in detail with every single lead forever. You will also need an automated follow-up system so that no one falls through the cracks.
An email follow-up system can save you a lot of time in comparison to a follow-up call to individual prospects.
Mistake #2: Giving Up on Leads Before There’s Even a Chance to Start Closing the Sale
Most professional salespeople give up on prospects before they turn into business. Most entrepreneurs have an even lower closing ratio, but if you change the way that you follow up with your potential clients, you can turn things around very quickly.
When an initial lead comes in, for instance, someone comes onto a website and requests information via a form on the website. Most small business people will do one of these things.
Most entrepreneurs will likely email the prospect with tons of sales literature and follow up via email a dozen times or so, and then quit trying with a “that’s not a real prospect after all” mentality.
Others might make a phone call, leave a voicemail, and wait for the person to call back.
Others will call and leave a voicemail and wait. Then call back and leave another voicemail. Then call back and leave another voicemail. And when the client doesn’t call back, they quit trying with a “that’s not a real prospect after all” mentality.
A very few will send out an expensive sales kit to the client via FedEx and wait a week or two to call them again. All in hopes that the sales kit closes the deal.
By the way, any of those different techniques will work every once in a while, but none of them will close a high percentage of deals for you.
A Better Way of Doing Things
A better process is to create different tiers of potential leads in the sales pipeline.
The first tier might be what I call email address leads. These are people who got free information from you and gave you their email address in return. If all you have is their email address, then you only have one way to follow up with them.
So, create an email follow-up system in your CRM that combines education (information that they need) with offers to buy stuff from you. You should start with something small and build on it. If you are using a CRM system with an automatic email follow-up, your follow-up is turn-key.
The second tier might be website form leads. This is where someone comes onto your website and fills out a form requesting information or a call back from you. These are much higher-quality leads, so they deserve a phone call.
They are more likely to close more quickly, so be persistent in getting them on the phone. Don’t just leave a voicemail and wait. Based on your conversation with them, you can determine the prospect’s needs. Once you’ve done that, you want to make more follow-up calls with the person or divert them to your email follow-up system.
Your highest tier might be call-in leads. Typically, when people call you, they want immediate results, so they will close much more quickly. Spend more time with these folks and follow up with them one-on-one for a longer period of time. Don’t quit on these leads.
Whatever system you decide to use, DON’T QUIT! They requested information from you for a reason. You can help them.
Mistake #3: Giving a Prospective Customers a Standardized Sales Pitch Leads to Them Feeling Unimportant
Don’t deliver prospects a standardized sales pitch. Instead, find out why they requested information from you. Once they tell you their problem, oddly enough, they will assume that you can solve the problem. The best way to do this is to ask a few open-ended questions to make sure you find the right fit for them.
Here are a few phrases that will be gold for you.
– Do you mind if I ask you a few questions so that I have a better idea of what we should be talking about?
– So why are you interested in (fill in the blank with whatever product or service you sell)?
– Has something happened recently that has moved this up on your priority list?
Those should help you get started on the right foot with your new prospect. The more that they talk, the more they will want to buy from you. Fight the urge to jump in when you see an opportunity to sell to them.
The Right and Wrong Way to Handle It.
This is the way that people usually handle calls from prospective clients.
Business Owner: “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions so that I have a better idea of what we should be talking about?“
Prospect: “I guess so…”
Business Owner: “So why are you interested in getting advertising specialties made for your company?“
Prospect: “Well, the company that we bought pens from last time increased their charge, and then messed up our website on the pens. We had to send them back, and we didn’t have any for our big trade show.”
Business Owner: “Well, let me tell you why that won’t be a problem with our company…“
Arrggghh… That is a BIG mistake. Your prospect is now venting to you about how bad your competitor is. Don’t cut her off. Encourage her to tell you more instead. Understanding your prospect’s pain points can be a powerful tool for you. Try something like…
Business Owner: “Gosh, that sounds terrible. What do you think that cost you?“
After she vents a little more, ask another question like, “Is there anything else about your current vendor that you’d like to improve?” etc., etc.
Continue asking questions until you feel like you have a few challenges that she has experienced. Then you can tie those directly to the benefits of your product or service that you think can fix her challenges.
The Key to Closing the Sale
So if you really want to close the sale and not push those leads away, realize that many of the people who contact you are not necessarily buyers now. However, these potential customers can become buyers in the future if you use these sales tactics to build a relationship with them.
Keep following up with your leads, and get an email follow-up program to help you create a smooth transition from leads to sales. And finally, don’t come rushing in with a sales pitch. Instead, ask your prospect a series of questions that gets them to tell you what the real problem is, then offer a solution.
Using strong sales techniques is a proven solution to move from a lead conversation to a sales conversation. Progressing that lead through the sales funnel and using closing strategies during the decision-making process is essential to success.
Start doing these best practices and you’ll close more sales, more often.
About Doug Staneart
