Closing Skills

When I ask salespeople or sales managers, “What is the most important selling skill you want your sales team to improve?” the most common response is, “Closing Skills!”

Prior to any training program, I meet with the manager who brings me in.  Typically, we are planning a training session for a mixed group of salespeople.  They may range in experience from one week to 40 years.  We may be planning for a 2 hour or a two-day workshop.  Whatever it is, we want to make the best use of time and focus on the most important selling skills this team needs.  So, one of my first questions is, “What selling skills does this team need to improve on the most?”  The most common reply to that question is, “Closing Skills.  I want them to close more sales.” 

 Then I take that same question to that sales team.  I want to find out from them, “What selling skills do you think we need to focus on?”  Again, the most common response is of course, closing skills.

Everyone wants to close more sales.  They want to know the closing style question that will get their customer to say, “Yes, I’ll buy from you”.

The struggle is that we think there are some magical words or phrases that we can use.  Maybe there is a clever one liner that will just work in every situation to get our customer to buy from us.  I call it a struggle because we never find those words.  Oh, we find closing questions that work.  But then we try them on the next customer and they don’t work.  So, the search goes on for that magical question.

To help explain this to workshops, I use the most important closing question a person will ever ask in life, “Will you marry me?”  Yes, the marriage proposal will hopefully be the most important closing question you will ever ask.

I ask the audience, “Was the answer your spouse gave you dependent on the wording you used?  The romantic setting, the special song playing in the background, the fact that you got down on one knee?  Did the answer depend on the size of the ring?”  That last part of my question usually gets a few laughs or comments.

My point is that, the words in the proposal are not as important as the person you are and the strength of the relationship.  Your success in getting your spouse to marry you is more dependent on who you are than it is on the question.  Heck, I’d bet that if you got down on one knee, opened a ring box and didn’t say a word, your spouse would have been smart enough to figure it out.  So quit stressing over the question and focus on the other parts of the process. The “Yes, I’ll buy from you”, is a result of who you are and how well you have developed the relationship.

Don’t get me wrong, you still have to ask the question and there are some closing question structures that are helpful for your customer to understand your value.  It’s estimated that 50% of sales calls end without a closing question.  Based on my observations of thousands of sales calls and role plays, I think it’s more like 75% of farm sales calls end without a closing style question.  Would the answer have been yes if asked?  We’ll never know because the salesperson was trying to figure out the perfect wording to the question.

So, what’s the #1 best closing style question?  In my opinion, it’s the one you ask.

 The answer to every closing question you don’t ask is always, No.  The best closing question is the one you ask.  Just like a marriage proposal, the words don’t matter. 

 If you or your team are struggling to close sales, reach out and let’s have an initial discussion on how I might be able to help you.

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