Search Results

I’ve written about how to be more effective at closing time, but what happens when the opportunity isn’t closing, doesn’t seem to be getting any closer to closing, and you know you need to move things along? Here are some do’s and don’ts:

Happy New Year! The holidays, now a week in our rear-view mirror, expose one of the biggest weaknesses that salespeople have. Nearly all salespeople head into the holidays intending to get as much business closed before Christmas as possible. Did you? Good. The problem is that only the top tier of salespeople succeed at getting most of that business closed – before Christmas. The rest, good intentioned and committed as they are, tend to run into two problems. 1) They have difficult reaching prospects; and 2) they have trouble getting them closed.

I wrote about Closing Urgency in last week’s Baseline Selling Tip. One salesperson, who believed I wrote it for him, proved himself correct. I had an unusual print job that needed to be completed within a week. My assistant was having difficulty identifying a local printer that could handle the job and get it done on a timely basis. “Bob” learned about the print job and with as much urgency as I’ve ever seen, contacted a one of his closable prospects, a printer. He and the printer both showed considerable urgency, appearing in my office within an hour.

Last week we discussed one way of eliminating “think it overs” at closing time by eliminating options. This week I’ll discuss the way to handle the “think it overs” you might still get at closing time.