Don't Let Salespeople Assume the Close

[0:04] This is the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast, supporting sales leaders and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects. I'm Hamish Knox. In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results, lead a great team, and hit more targets with Full Funnel Freedom. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, I'll be sharing ideas and insights around what happens when our salespeople assume the close. The Full Funnel of Freedom podcast is brought to you by Sandler in Calgary. Sandler in Calgary supports its clients in creating consistently, repeatably, reliably full sales funnels and a scalable organization.

[0:50] Go to hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to Sandler. for more details and to contact us for a introductory conversation.

[1:01] As we are getting towards our one-year anniversary, really appreciate all of the support that you have given us in terms of ratings and reviews and shares and inquiries. And I'd like to share a review from one of the audience members. This is from Jamie Leach, and he, off of the interview that I did with Jennifer Sino Tucker, his review is, we are doctors diagnosing our clients' wants and needs.

[1:35] Mind blown, excellent analogy, awesome episode. Episode I would love to read one of your reviews on an upcoming episode so best place to drop those is on Apple podcasts or of course you can leave a review on Google as well and I do look forward to reading one of yours on a future episode closing what we want to do in sales we want to get yeses we want to add new clients we want to take that top of the funnel and turn it into a a closed deal at the bottom of the funnel, but we may be looking at our closing ratios and we're thinking, man, our salespeople, I believe they could close more, especially because they're getting to that presentation stage and they're qualifying effectively, but they're just not bringing the deals across the finish line.

[2:26] And what could be happening is our salespeople could actually be assuming the close when they come back to present, your gut reaction may be, well, my salespeople don't do that. And I would say, really? Watch them make a presentation. And especially this comes up in technical sales where we've got some data that clearly demonstrates a payoff to their prospect by working with us. Our salespeople don't, are probably, and probably unintentionally, giving off an impression to their prospect of, if you don't sign up with us, you're kind of dumb. And our prospects can sense that. And that's going to make them feel uncomfortable. You may have been in this situation with a salesperson in your life, whether professionally or personally, where they were trying to convince you using data, data, data, and subtly implying that if you didn't work with them, that you weren't that smart. And they may have even said things like, it would be a really good idea to, and then fill in the blank with whatever data they presented.

[3:37] There's only two answers to that question, either yes, where do I sign or no, because I'm a dummy. And that doesn't make anybody feel very good. So what typically happens, and you've probably seen this with your salespeople, is the prospect at the end of the presentation mumbles something about, well, I got to think about it and I'll get back to you.

[3:57] And they end up ghosting our salesperson. Now, this is not a discredit to our salespeople. We forget that our prospects have lots of other things going on in their world. And to use a super nerdy reference, they are not frozen in carbonite whenever we stop talking to them. But because selling our stuff is so important to us, sometimes we can get in a headspace that says, oh, well, this is the most important thing in our prospects world. By the way, it could be if we ask and find out. But even if it is,

[4:35] they still have lots of other things going on. So when we want to reduce the potential for us giving off the impression of, if you don't sign up, you're dumb, or potentially having one of our salespeople make a presentation that's no longer valid and waste their time, there's four steps that I would encourage you to coach your salespeople on when it comes to making presentations. The first step is to get permission to summarize. So our salesperson has qualified the prospect, they've come back with some kind of a proposal or presentation that they're going to make.

[5:15] Because they probably didn't qualify in the morning and come back in the afternoon. There's been an interval of time, whether that's days or weeks or possibly even months. Lots has changed potentially in their prospects world. So we want our salesperson right at the start of the conversation after we do, hey, great to see you again, and all the rapport building that we want to do to set the stage for a positive conversation. Conversation will want them to say something like, prospect, it's been a couple of weeks, couple of months, whatever, since we last got together. Is it okay with you if I sum up our conversations so far? This seems blindingly obvious, but if our salesperson is in the mindset that we've got all the data, all I have to do is show the prospect a way to solve their challenges is working with us and magic will happen. Well, they're forgetting that their prospect may have actually already solved those problems. Now, when we ask permission, number one, we're actually building rapport because we don't sound like pushy, aggressive salespeople. And number two, our prospect focuses on listening to our salesperson instead of waiting for them to say, and here's how much it costs, and then asking for a discount, which by the way, they do to every salesperson, they're allowed to do that, but we want to interrupt that pattern.

[6:42] So asking to sum up creates rapport and it actually engages our prospect. Second step is get our salesperson to review how they got to the presentation. What were all the compelling emotional reasons why their prospect wants to work with a company like ours, what the payoff is to the company and to the prospect personally for solving those problems. What is the prospect got set aside time, money, resources wise to solve those challenges? And how is the prospect ultimately going to select somebody? So review all of that. Take them back to the very beginning, especially in enterprise-type sales cycles, longer sales cycles, where we may need to have three, four, five, six, 17 meetings with a prospect. Every time we come back and visit with a prospect, we want our salesperson to be doing at least a mini review and confirming, and this is step number three.

[7:47] Confirming that all of that is still accurate. And so that we, once our salesperson is done summarizing, we might say, does that all sound accurate to you? Or what did I miss? This also creates a dialogue with a prospect. If our salesperson just says, hey, can I sum up? Here's the summary and let's move on. It kind of feels like a waste of the time to the prospect. Like, well, why do we even bother going through that if you're not going to engage with me? So we want our salespeople to confirm that their summary is accurate.

[8:21] The other thing that we want to do in this is to ask the question, so what's changed since we last got together? They may discover that even after they summarize what's happened, reviewed how they got to the presentation step, and that they confirmed that all of this is still accurate, they may say, well, what's changed? And their prospect might say, oh, well, I've.

[8:46] Solved one of those problems. Or, oh, well, this other new problem is a higher priority for me now. One of my friends had a situation where they talked to a business owner. They agreed to come back the following week to talk to some of their people. And within the week, the owner had sold the business to one of their employees. And if my friend hadn't said, what's changed? They would have gone in, done a presentation, run into a metaphorical brick wall at the end when the new owner's like, yeah, that's great, but I just spent a lot of money on this company. I don't need those services right now.

[9:26] Instead, by asking what's changed to the now previous owner, my friend discovered that there had been a major change. They suggested to the previous owner that their presentation might not be valid. The previous owner said, no, no, no, it absolutely is because the new owner definitely needs to work with you. And my friend walked out with a signed order, but they only were able to do that because they asked what's changed. Now, the last step is we want to confirm what's missing from the prospect's side. I like the phrase, what boxes are unchecked. Some people might not like that phrase, but I coach my my salespeople to say, so what boxes are unchecked on your side in order to move forward? Now, this is information that the prospect wants before confirming that they want to work with our company. So if we ask that question, once we validated and confirmed what or what has not changed, our salesperson may end up being able to check the prospect's boxes in 15 minutes when they've got an hour set aside for the presentation.

[10:38] There's no need to over-present.

[10:43] Just because we have an hour set aside for a presentation, our salesperson does not need to spend that entire hour if the prospect wants to close in 10 minutes. Now, they certainly could use some of that extra remaining time to set up the future with the prospect, put quarterly reviews in place, which has been talked about in previous episodes, but also asking, so what do you need to see, hear, or experience in this conversation for it to be good use of your time? It's another talk track we can coach our sales people to ask. They're again engaging our prospect in a dialogue instead of coming off as a

[11:23] pushy, aggressive salesperson. Key metric to keep an eye on from a sales leadership perspective is the ratio of presentations to closes. And I also like to keep track of the ratio of discovery meetings or first appointments ever to closes because those ratios will give me a really good sense of, is my sales team going off pace? And if I'm paying attention to those ratios, I will actually know in closer to real time that I need to support my salespeople by course correcting because they're having way too many first appointments to closes and they're doing way too many presentations to closes. In the grand scheme of things, if our salespeople have done their job in qualifying.

[12:10] The ratio of presentations to closes should be pretty close. It's never going to be one-to-one. We're never going to close 100%, but it's going to be at least 50%, probably closer to 60, 70, 80, if they've, again, done an effective job in qualifying. So to sum up, the four steps we want to coach our salespeople to do when they come back to make a presentation is, number one, get permission to summarize. Number two, review how our salesperson and their prospect got to the presentation.

[12:44] Number three, confirm with their prospect that all of that is still accurate and ask what has changed since they last got together. And then number four, confirm what the prospect needs to see, hear, or experience in order for them to feel comfortable selecting our salesperson for their business. If they follow those four steps consistently, they will create more rapport with their prospects close faster, and they will start a long-term mutually profitable relationship. This has been the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I've been your host, Hamish Knox, today sharing ideas and insights on what can happen when our salespeople assume the close and four steps for not assuming the close with a prospect to create greater rapport. The Full Funnel Freedom Podcast is brought to you by Sandler in Calgary, creating small changes to make huge impacts in our client's sales functions. Go to hamish.sandler.com forward slash howtosandler for more details. Thanks for listening. Give us a rating and a review, like and share. Connect with us on Instagram, SandlerYYC. And until we connect with you on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[14:06] Thank you for listening to Full Funnel Freedom with Hamish Knox. If you want to increase your sales with ease, go to fullfunnelfreedom.com.

[14:16] Music.