CLOSING TECHNIQUES

Application: Sales Effectiveness

The Concept

In all exchanges between sellers and buyers, there comes a moment when buyers need to make up their minds. Very often, success can be improved if that moment occurs with the seller present. So, sales people have evolved tools to help focus on this moment and to understand relative sales effectiveness, marketers ought to be familiar with them. Called “closing techniques”, they include:

• Asking for the business. It is obvious, and therefore often forgotten, simply to ask buyers if they want to go ahead. A surprising number of sophisticated and experienced professionals do not do this.
• Overcoming objections. This is based on asking buyers whether there are any reasons why they can’t proceed and then handling each and every objection as it arises.
• Open-ended questions. This is an extension of “overcoming objections”. A series of questions are asked to get further and further into the buyer’s needs and to match the offer closely to those needs.
• Exaggeration to the absurd. Here, the seller may take one of the objections buyers present and exaggerate it to the point of the ridiculous in order to overcome it as a barrier to purchase.
• The “trial close”. A method to test the buyer’s reaction, often responding to positive signals during a sales conversation. It can take the form of assumed actions and lead to planning of practical issues like delivery.
• The “assumed close”. Here a customer’s body language signifies that they are happy with the suggestions and want to buy. The supplier moves to talking about next steps and assumes the sale is agreed. (In fact, they may be concerned that, if the customer is asked for the business or asked whether they want to go ahead, barriers will be raised in their mind.)
• The “go-away”. In this instance a seller is convinced that the offer matches the needs a buyer has. If the buyer tries to negotiate on price, or cut corners, the seller can suggest that they don’t go ahead. This causes the buyer to re-commit to the sale.

Closing techniques developed in product selling have made their way into both business and professional services and are taught in sales courses throughout the world. Books, courses and conferences are alive with them.

History, Context, Criticism, and Development

Different closing techniques have been used as different attitudes to sales have evolved. It seems, for instance, that in the USA at the end of the 19th century sales people were expected to “control the sales presentation”. In the early 20th century they were the heroes of commerce, slick, motivated, and convincing. From the 1960s on, though, the questioning and diagnostic approaches, epitomized by Rackham’s “SPIN” selling, began to develop.

Voices and Further Reading

• “The experienced salesman knows how to avoid a direct confrontation with human inertia and reluctance to make a decision. Without asking for a direct yes or no, he may begin to write up the order or ask which of various delivery dates would be preferable. He may inquire about the quantity the customer would like to try in a new display. This may lead the customer into taking action without consciously having to make a direct decision – a difficult step for some people.” McCarthy, E.J., 1960.
• McDonald. M.H.B. and Leppard, J.W., Effective Industrial Selling. Heinemann, 1988.
• “The sale is closed only when the buyer makes a firm commitment to place an order. The salesman should be constantly looking for opportunities to close the sale at any moment of the sales interview … [he/she] needs to have a number of techniques at his disposal.” McDonald and Leppard, ibid.
• Shapiro, B. and Posner, R.S., “Making the major sale”. Harvard Business Review, July–August 2006.
• “Because of the complexity of the selling process and the length of the selling cycle, the close is the first concrete evidence that the sales person is successful. Since the signature may occur anywhere from six months to three years after the start of the sales process the sales person should close on each call …” Shapiro and Posner, ibid
• Pickens, J.W., The Art of Closing a Deal. PRION, 1989.

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