Summarize Where You've Been

You've presented your customer a tailored solution and asked for feedback, and you've addressed any lingering concerns. Your customer has indicated that he doesn't have any additional questions and that he's on board with the solution you offered. At this point, it's important to launch into the close—not necessarily with a bang but with a shift that signals to your customer that you're moving forward. Now is the time to recap what you and your customer have covered during the course of the sales conversation.

This is the point at which it's important to recap the key issues you've discussed with your customer and quickly go over the progress you've made during your time together. It's when you want to emphasize the customer's highest-priority needs and reiterate how your solution meets those needs. Doing so not only helps remind your customer of the sales journey you've been on together but also serves to instill further confidence in him, reminding him of how you've listened to his needs and tailored a unique solution linked to those needs. Summarizing where you've been helps your customer recall the collaboration you have enjoyed while conducting the due diligence necessary to arrive at this point.

When summarizing, you might say something along the lines of, “Nick, as you know, we've spent the past three weeks exploring how your company wants to improve logistics in its supply chain. We've been discussing the key areas in which strategic improvements can be made here, and we demonstrated how Product X can immediately improve efficiency by 25 percent or better.”

You can be specific when summarizing, or you can speak in more general terms. The key is to make sure that you're on the same page as your customer. Doing so helps leave no doubt in your customer's mind that the right next step is to move forward. It also helps reduce any feeling of buyer's remorse your customer might have, since he is confident that you have had his back as a trusted advisor in what's been a constructive, collaborative selling conversation.

As natural as it might seem to summarize, it's actually not at all uncommon for sales reps to skip this step. Oftentimes, reps feel as though they've already covered this ground, particularly if they've asked for feedback during the presenting phase of the sales process. When you fail to summarize, however, you don't provide your customer with the last bit of confidence needed to move forward. You don't provide that additional opportunity for him to consider all of the work, time, and effort that was invested to get to this point. Nor do you offer the chance for him to come to the conclusion that it's the right time to move forward.

Summarizing provides one more juncture at which your customer can feel completely confident in the solution you have suggested. It gives him time to solidify his decision to sign with you. It's especially important to do so during complex sales with long selling cycles or with sales calls that have involved a lot of people. The extent to which you summarize (meaning, how in-depth you go with your recap) depends on how complex the sales call has been. But whether simple or complex, summarizing is a critical step in the closing.

Gain Commitment to Move Forward

Up to this point, from opening to discovering to presenting, you've consulted with your customer. You've recommended a solution. Now it's time to advocate for the solution you presented. As a trusted advisor, you've built the rapport and earned the credibility that allows you to ask for your customer's business. This is the moment of truth.

Gaining commitment from your customer to move forward is done in two important steps: advocate and then ask.

Define Next Steps

As you continue to move forward with closing, building on the momentum, it's important to define the next steps, outlining for your customer what you will do together to finalize the deal, whether sending contracts, opening a purchase order, or issuing a memo of understanding.

It's important at this juncture to be clear and concise about what each of the next steps in the process are and what those steps entail. Be specific when discussing any technical aspects needed to get the deal done. It's critical that your customer understand not only what the next steps are, but also how they look. Make sure your customer knows who is doing what when. Delineate responsibilities and any deadlines so this important part of the sales process doesn't stall as a result of confusion, which could frustrate your customer and damage the close.

So, for instance, you might simply say, “For this next step, I will issue the paperwork to you as a PDF via e-mail. Please review it carefully, sign a copy, and return it to me by the end of the week via e-mail. I'll confirm receipt and have the document countersigned so we are ready to go first thing Monday morning.”

Defining the next steps is one of those things that a lot of sales reps skip. It's easy to assume that your customer knows the drill or understands the process, even if you haven't worked together before. But leaving this to chance can cause confusion on the part of your customer, who might not know who is doing what next or what is expected of him. It might delay the sale, and it might frustrate your customer. None of that does any good—for your customer or you or your organization—and it certainly doesn't help you close the deal any faster. So, as a consultant who has your customer's best interests in mind, take the time to define for him exactly what the next steps in the process are so he isn't left wondering what will happen.

Confirm with Your Customer

Throughout the process, we've noted the importance of asking for feedback, of not making assumptions, of confirming. Doing so is no less important now. Although it can be easy to want to rush the process, confirming that your customer understands what happens next is a critical step.

We sometimes see sales reps who skip this step, usually because they don't want to risk an objection at this late stage in the game. But top-performing sales professionals understand that confirming is just about getting the customer to agree to the next steps that have been defined—not to the close itself. You've already taken care of that by advocating and asking.

With that, it's important to make sure that your customer fully understands what will happen next and who is responsible for what. Confirm responsibilities, tasks, and deadlines. This can be done with a simple question such as, “How do these next steps work for you?” or “Do those next steps all make sense?” or even just a quick “How does that sound to you?”

Closing isn't about pushing a contract in front of your customer. It's a conversation in which you've built rapport, collaborated with your customer, and earned the right to be considered a trusted advisor. It's about creating value, at every step throughout the sales process. That allows you to build on the positive momentum that moves you seamlessly from a solid opening all the way through to a confident close. Because closing should be the natural culmination of everything you've discussed so far with your customer, and he should feel confident that, together, you've devised a tailored solution that meets his unique needs.

Closing should be the natural next step in the sales conversation that you've been having with your customer. By the time you get to this point in the process, you've already done about 95 percent of the work, so closing should simply leverage the momentum you've already got going.

It's important to remember that the conversation you've been having with your customer, whether during one meeting or several, isn't just about getting to this point so you can close the deal. Building rapport, establishing credibility, and connecting with your customer aren't only about getting a signature on the dotted line. These things are about becoming a trusted advisor, a consultant who collaborates with her customer to do the best thing for him and his organization—whether you close this deal or the next one. Top-performing sales professionals understand the importance of following the process and reading buying signs, balancing the science and art of selling in order to secure the close with their customers.

Of course, closing doesn't always go the way we would like it to. From time to time, customers will have objections. Whether they come up at closing or even earlier in the process, if you're in sales, some objections are inevitable. We'll look at how to deal with objections next, in Chapter 8.

Critical Selling: Lessons Learned

• Top-performing sales professionals balance the art and science of closing well, harnessing the natural momentum of the entire sales call—from opening to discovering to presenting—in order to move the customer forward from being interested in the solution presented to making a commitment to it.
• Timing plays a big factor when it comes to closing. Top-performing sales professionals can identify the right time to close and know how to ensure that they don't close too early or too late and miss the opportunity.
• Summarizing what you have covered in the sales process thus far instills confidence in the customer that your solution meets his needs. It reminds him of the diligence you have done together and confirms that now is the right time to move forward. At closing is when it's time to shift from suggesting a solution to advocating for it. As a trusted advisor, you have earned the right to reiterate to your customer your firm belief in the fact that the tailored solution you have suggested will meet his needs. It's time to gain commitment by advocating for your solution and asking your customer for his business.
• It's critical to define the next steps in the process so that your customer understands who is doing what when and what will happen next. After you've defined those steps, confirm with your customer that he fully understands them.
• A good close should allow your customer to feel confident that, together, you have come up with the perfect solution for his needs, and he should willingly agree to move forward to seal the deal.