17 Easy Closing Sales Tips

Do you ever wonder why some sales people crush their sales numbers consistently and others struggle to even achieve quota? You know, the thing is that sales breaks down essentially into two things. The first is what you do, and then the second is how often you do it.

And what I find is that even sometimes sales people who are doing the same amount of activity, one sales person is way more successful and way more effective than the other. So in this video we're really going to isolate what you can be doing to make sure that you're closing more sales than ever before. In this video I'm going to show you 17 easy closing sales tips.

Check it out. Number one, stop being like others. It sounds obvious in some ways, but what I find is that most sales people are doing some version of the same thing.

They're getting in front of a prospect, they get all excited, they pitch whatever it is that they can pitch, they start to present all of the features and benefits that they can offer, and they maybe ask a couple of questions, and then go right back into that presentation where they're doing the majority of their talking. They're not giving their prospect a lot of opportunity to actually talk. They're not showing value, they're not creating value.

As a result, when they start to use that closing question that they have been taught, the prospect says some version of, you know what, I'm gonna think about it. And then they disappear and they never get back. What I challenge you to do is to stop being like those other people and to use an approach that really focuses on having an effective discovery up front.

And when it comes to any technique in selling, be willing to take your risks. Use a different approach than what your coworkers or other competitors might be using. Number two, take risks with prospects.

There is no more effective approach than the higher risk approach with sales. And the reason for that is most sales people are unwilling to take risks. Human beings naturally are risk averse.

There's a reason for that, right? Over millennia human beings, the humans that are still here today are here most likely because they didn't take lots of risks. They didn't jump in front of that lion and so they lived and thus, their progeny went on.

Humans have always been rewarded for not taking huge risks. But in today's world, particularly in selling, taking risks actually is going to give you the biggest rewards. Assuming they're calculated risks and they're within a system, the most willing you are to, the next time you think a prospect is feeling a certain way or maybe they just don't seem interested, just say it, say, George, I get the sense that this doesn't really make sense, is that fair?

See what they say. A lot of times what's going to happen is that risk will be rewarded with them saying, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry, I wasn't focused, I'm here though, I wanna hear what you have to say. Take those risks with prospects.

Number three, get them talking. Some really, really powerful data has just recently surfaced that the more a prospect is actually talking during the discovery conversation, the more likely that sales person is to actually close the sale. We have always generally understood this to be true, but now thanks to some really powerful data, as a result of essentially artificial intelligence through a company called Gong.

IO we now know for a fact that the sales people that are able to get their prospects talking at length, and I mean the more, literally the higher the word count is of the prospect, the more likely they are to close the sale. So what we want to be doing is understanding that the more we can get our prospects really engaged in the conversation to start talking, the more likely we are to actually make the sale. Get them talking.

Get them to open up. Talking about the challenges that they have, the business-related concerns, not just the product focus questions but real business-related concerns. The more you get them going the more into the conversation they are and the more likely they are to be receptive to the solution that you have to offer.

Number four, shut up. Now (laughs) it sounds really rude, and you're thinking to yourself, why the hell would I listen to this guy? The data, again, the flip side of this data shows that the less sales people are really talking, and by that I mean, not going off on these long monologues, the more likely the sales person is to actually close sales.

The better we are at getting our prospects really going and talking, the better off we are. And sometimes as sales people we get really excited about our offering, we get really excited about what it is that we have to offer and all of the amazing solutions that we have that we talk too much and we end up, before we know it, we look back and we just talked for four minutes straight with the sales person not saying anything. We need to break that pattern and instead really focus on them, getting them going.

And the less talking we're doing, the more effective we are. Number five, nobody cares about your company. Now again, a lot of new data is coming out that shows that when sales people talk about their company for too long it is highly correlative with negative outcomes in selling.

And so, this basically means that your prospects don't care about your company. They don't care about all of the awards that you've won, they don't care about your management structure, they don't care about your CEO and all of the philanthropy that they do. They don't even care about how long your company's been around.

What they care about is, does this sales person who works at this company, can this person solve the challenges that I have? If it's not about them, they don't care about it. Don't focus on your company, don't focus on how you guys have the best service and all that, what you wanna do is instead focus your conversation to what are the key challenges that they're looking to solve.

What are the key objectives that they're looking to accomplish. And when you're focused on that, now you're starting to build real value in the conversation. Number six, quit pitching.

Pitching is a strategy that has been around forever in sales. It literally goes back to the NCR primer, which is National Cash Register, they had their sales training philosophy which was developed in the year 1887. Now, 1887 was a really long time ago.

This is before any technology existed, and back then it really worked. The approach of the canned pitch was super effective. But you know what, it's been a lot of years since when this strategy really worked.

And yet, so many sales people are still using the pitching approach where they get in front of a prospect and all they're doing is pitching their product. It's not Shark Tank, right? In Shark Tank you want to pitch effectively.

But when you're in a selling situation, a one-on-one selling situation, what you really want to do is engage prospects in conversations. Understand them, get them talking, get them focused on the challenges that they're looking to accomplish. Once you do that, then you have fully understood through a proper discovery conversation, you've understood what's going on.

Now you can present the challenges or the solutions to those challenges that they're facing. But that comes a little bit later, it doesn't start with the pitch. Number seven, dig into challenges.

Now I've already said this a couple of times in this video, but we really, if we're to dig into this issue a little bit, the idea is that we want to really understand the key challenges that our prospects are facing. And a challenge isn't, hey, we're looking to generate $5 million or more in revenue, no. The challenge is, you know what, currently we're at $50 million in revenue and we really know that we should be at 55.

And so, what's the challenge that's causing them to not really get to that place? The challenge might go in further, digging more might be that they just haven't had an effective marketing strategy. And now we wanna dig into that.

What have they done, what's going on there? The more we can dig into those challenges that they're facing, pertaining to whatever it is that you sell, of course, right? If you're an operational consultant, then we don't need to talk about the marketing issues.

But the more we can dig into the key challenges, the more likely we are to really understand what's going on, create value, and then once we've created that value then present the solutions. Number eight, disqualify the non-fits. This really goes against what a lot of people have been taught.

I can't tell you how many times I get on the phone with a VP of sales and they want to bring me into their organization to speak to their team, and they say, we want you to tell them to never take no for an answer. And the first thing I think about is, why the hell would I tell them that? Why would you not take no for an answer?

I'm not saying that we want people to be pushovers. I'm not saying that we wanna just suddenly not care about the outcome of a sale. But, if a prospect is not a fit, we want to actually get rid of them as soon as possible.

Because I'll tell you a little secret. What separates the top performers from everyone else is that they're spending, in many cases, the majority of their time in front of well-qualified prospects. And the only way that they're spending the majority of their time in front of well-qualified prospects is that they are disqualifying the people that are not a fit up front.

If you're selling a $5 product, let's say you're selling pens, pretty much anyone's qualified for your offer. So fine, but chances are if you're watching this video you're not selling $5 pens. You're selling 50,000, $100,000 offerings, or maybe you're selling $20,000 kitchens, or you're selling a piece of software that over the course of a year with a large sized team could be $100,000 sale.

These types of sales, the real value sales, we need to get rid of all those people that are not going to be a fit as quickly as possible so that way we can focus on the people that are a fit. Number nine, understand the upside for them. This can be taken out of context into saying that you should tell them the ROI of working with you.

And that's not what I'm saying at all. Now ROI is a really valuable concept that we can use when selling, but what we want to do is we don't want to tell them what the ROI is. We want to help them say, to help them understand what is the upside for them.

So let me give you an example. I'll use my own world because that's the easiest thing that I know, which is, let's say I'm talking to the CEO of a company and the conversation is around developing their sales organization. And so the conversation that I would typically have, let's say it's a billion dollar company, and I say to the CEO, the CEO's talking about his challenges or her challenges and they're going through what's going on and I say, you know what, if you were able to solve these challenges what do you think that could mean in additional revenue to the organization?

He says, we could easily increase sales by another $50 million. That, my friends, is what you call upside. A billion dollar company could easily increase sales by $50 million, which to them, by the way, is not a huge number necessarily.

But in terms of my potential solution, $50 million is an absurd amount of money. That now is the upside of solving those challenges, which by the way, they're talking, the CEO is talking to me to help them solve. So the value in many ways of my offering is the fact that if we're able to solve this, which in many cases we can, that means $50 million in additional revenue.

And then what we'd want to do, the real advanced person would then dig into, what does $50 million mean in profit? Now we're really getting into true bottom line. Talking to a CEO, what they care about is profit.

They don't even care about revenue as much as they care about profit. And so, getting to that, now that's getting a little advanced but still, what we want to do is understand the upside for them. Really get into what would solving these challenges mean to them.

Even if you're selling kitchen cabinets. There's still an upside for them that you don't wanna talk about, you wanna get them talking about it. If you're able to fix these cabinets, what would it mean to your life?

And they're like, oh, well we would entertain people more, we would have people over, it would be beautiful, it'd be something that I could look at finally. That's the value that you're offering bricks. Number 10, establish a budget later on in the process.

There is some really incredible data that's been floating around now that I just love that shows that most average and bottom performing sales people are talking about price really early on in the discovery process. Whereas, top performers are waiting 'til about 45 minutes into that initial discovery to really establish a budget, to discuss pricing and budget. The difference is really, really big.

The average people are essentially leading with price, yet the top performers are building value throughout the conversation, understanding exactly what's going on with the prospect, everything that's going on, and then getting and establishing a real budget with a prospect later on in the discovery process. The difference between these two approaches is night and day, both for the sales person in terms of the effectiveness and likelihood of actually closing, but also for the prospect in terms of their experience. Because it's not about the price, it's about is this person's offering going to provide enough value that the price that it's going to cost me is going to be essentially inconsequential.

We get to that, we're going to close so many more sales. Establish the budget later on the discovery process. Number 11, know their process.

One of the biggest complaints that prospects have about sales people is that the sales person didn't take the time to really understand their full buying process. And with big companies in particular, this is really one of the key determinants of whether you're going to close that sale. Who's involved in the decision-making process?

What does their process typically look like? What is the overall approach that they would bring to making a decision like this? Understanding that whole process is going to not only give you so much more insight to make sure that you know what those steps look like and so you have clarity and so that way you don't get hit over the side of the head by something that you didn't see coming, it's going to help you accomplish all that, but it's also going to ensure that the prospect feels like they're really driving the process.

And by the way, this isn't just true for big companies. This could also be if you're a realtor and you're talking to a potential buyer for a house. What's their process for determining what kind of a house they want and then ultimately making that buying decision?

The more we understand their buying process, the more likely we are to be much more successful and not get sidetracked and not suddenly get that big, oh, you know what, I gotta think about this, this isn't really, we're not really ready to make a decision, and that kind of stuff. Know their process. Number 12, keep the presentation brief.

There is so much data out there that says that basically, bottom and average performers are spending so much more time in presentation mode, whereas top performers are spending way more time in the discovery part of the conversation, and then the presentation itself is actually pretty brief. The briefer and shorter we keep this presentation, the more likely we are to be successful. Period.

Just get out the key points that you need to get in the presentation, and by the way, that is going to be based on the challenges that they've discussed in that discovery. All you really need to present are the solutions to the challenges that they've already mentioned. Show that the offering is going to help solve the challenges that they've mentioned, and that's it.

You don't have to give this huge three hour presentation. It can be actually very short and concise and to the point. Make sure that you keep it brief.

Number 13, the 60 second rule. During the presentation, the data shows that top performers essentially never go on for more than about 70 seconds in a sales presentation without reengaging the prospect back into the conversation. So if you look at a top performer's sales conversation, even during the presentation, it involves a lot of back and forth throughout the conversation.

And so, this led me to create the 60 second rule, which basically says that we never want to go on for more than 60 seconds without reengaging the prospect back into the conversation. We never wanna go on for more than 60 seconds just going with our big monologue, and we think our speech is so slick, but in reality they're already starting to lose interest because they're not engaged in the conversation. A presentation should be a dialogue, not a monologue.

So follow that 60 second rule, and if you start to see that, you know what, I've been talking for awhile without reengaging the prospect into this conversation, take a step back and reengage them into the conversation. Number 14, feedback loops. A second ago you were probably saying to yourself, well, how do I reengage them in the conversation?

Well, that's what a feedback loop is all about. A feedback loop is all about reengaging the prospect back into the conversation and making sure that you really still have their attention. Making sure that they really do think that what you're saying makes sense.

And so, a feedback loop is something as simple as a question like, does that make sense? Or, does that work for you? Little questions, or even something like, is that okay?

Whatever it is, what we want to be doing is pulling them back into the conversation. So that way when we've gone on for, let's say, 30 seconds talking about one particular solution that we have, we bring 'em back into the conversation. Does that make sense?

See, I did it and you probably initially thought to yourself, yeah, yeah, it does make sense. That's how powerful feedback loops are. We can use these constantly.

Top sales performers are using questions, little feedback loops like that, 50, 60, 70 times in a conversation during a presentation to make sure they're reengaging the prospect. Your prospect isn't gonna say to themselves, oh, they're using feedback loops on me. No, what they're going to think is, wow, I'm really on the same page with this person.

Cool? Number 15, stop closing. The data shows that closing doesn't work.

The closing techniques don't matter anymore. What matters is is that we were really, really strong in the discovery process so that way when it comes time to the close it just happens. It's just, George, what would you like to do next?

And we really figured out all of the steps in between. So if you've been strong in the discovery process, you've given them a presentation that is really based on the challenges that they've had, and it's really showing that it's going to solve them in a way that makes sense to them, the close just naturally happens. We don't need these fancy closing techniques.

It still baffles me that sales trainers are still using hardcore closing techniques that ultimately are making the prospect pretty uncomfortable. Stop closing, and just make sure that you're really strong up front so that way by the time you get to the close it just happens. There doesn't have to be some magic silver bullet question.

It just happens. Number 16, clear and scheduled next steps. This is something that in today's world is so important.

Chances are you are not in one call close situations. I very rarely come across sales people who are getting a prospect on the phone or getting in front of a prospect and they truly expect that they're going to close that prospect right then and there. It does happen, but in reality, most of us are selling offerings that are more complex and require multiple steps in order to close the sale.

And that being the case, we need to be sure that we live by clear and scheduled next steps. So that means that every single interaction with a prospect ends with a a clear and scheduled next step. And so that means that someone took out their calendar, the prospect literally took out their calendar, and they said, yep, okay, I'm free to talk at this time at this location and we're gonna talk about this and it's in my calendar.

And a calendar invite went out and they accepted the calendar invite. Everything is clear and scheduled. You never want to end a conversation with a prospect without a clear and scheduled next step, ever.

And by the way, if they're unwilling to schedule next steps, chances are it means that they really don't want to have that next step with you anyways. So we wanna make sure, we almost wanna see this as a test. Are they willing to put a next step in their calendar?

And if they are, now you're on track and you're not gonna see it just fall apart in that confused never never land. Number 17, S W cubed N. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, what the heck does S W cubed N mean?

It's very simple. What it stands for is, some will, some won't, so what, next. This phrase has been around forever.

And I couldn't love it more today than I loved it the first time I heard it because it is so damn true. Some will, some won't, so what, next. It's not a big deal.

So often in sales we come across these problems and we come across these prospects and we come across these situations and we freak out and we're like oh my God, it fell apart and I did this wrong, or they responded this way and I'm so angry at them. You know what, take a deep breath. Some prospects are gonna close.

Some prospects aren't going to close. And you know what, so what? And if they turn out to be a knucklehead, move on, next.

It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, sales is about numbers. It is about behaviors.

It's about doing the right things when you're doing those behaviors, but it is about numbers. So don't ever take one particular situation and extrapolate that like that is the biggest problem that I'm facing. It just doesn't matter.

Some will, some won't, so what, next. There are 17 easy closing sales tips. I wanna hear from you.

Which of these ideas do you find most useful. Be sure to share below in the comment section to get involved in the conversation. If you enjoyed this video, then I have an awesome free ebook on 25 tips to crush your sales goal.

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