Lesson 7: Closing a sale and handling objections
Once you’ve identified your customer’s wants, needs, and abilities through meaningful discovery, you’ll know the best way to communicate how your solution brings value to the customer. After checking for feedback, it’s time to move on to closing a deal and handling objections.
Closing the deal
It’s time to close the sale by ensuring the customer knows the value your product or service will provide them. A successful close requires confidence. It’s value-based and assumptive. Click on each tip for a successful close below to learn more.
Exude confidence
Going into the close, remember our lesson on mindset–no matter the outcome, this is an opportunity to learn and grow. Have confidence even if you do not close the deal, because there will always be other deals. If your potential client doesn’t agree to a deal, they are still a potential client. Hearing “no” is part of the process and it brings you one step closer to the next “yes”!
Convey value
Leading to the close, communicate the non-monetary value of your product or service. What problem will this solve for your customer? What’s the emotional driver that makes this valuable? How does it meet the customer’s wants and needs? After you’ve established the non-monetary value, explain the monetary value in the close or offer statement. State the full price and then the discounted price and summarize what they’re getting for the price they are paying.
Assume the close
Always assume the close! This means don’t ask if the customer wants to buy your solution, instead assume they are going to buy it and ask for payment.
If you’ve established strong rapport and connected the customer’s NWAs with your FABs, and the closing should go well. But, it’s not uncommon for the customer to have objections to the offer. Let’s find out how to address them.
Handling objections
Some deals will go through without any problems and you can move straight to follow-up. Other times, you’ll have to handle customer objections. Objections to a deal are an opportunity to practice your negotiation and active listening skills.
To handle an objection, use your active listening skills to find out if the objection is real or not. Restate the customer’s reasons for the objection and listen for hidden reasons. You can ask questions and offer ways to overcome such as “Other than price, what is holding you back from this?” If not all decision-makers are present, offer to bring the other key parties into the conversation to answer their questions.
PRO-TIP
Do not make more than 2 attempts to overcome objections! You want to maintain rapport and allow the possibility of future sales with that client by not pushing too hard. Instead, end the objections phase with something like: “How can I follow up with you?”
Whether you’ve heard a yes (yay!) or a no (better luck next time!), the final step of your sales flow should be to follow up. Learn how in the next lesson.