
How to Close a Sales Call - antoviaque
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/how_to_close_a_sales_call.html
======
drumdance
IME the key to closing a sale is to open it in a way that makes the buyer
comfortable saying no. If you get them to commit up front to the idea that no
is acceptable, even desirable, and that "maybe" is a waste of time (and really
just a polite way of saying "no"), the "yes" will be obvious.

Example:

[At beginning of sales meeting]

"I'm going to show you my product and I hope it's a good fit for you. But our
product isn't a fit for everyone. So, if you decide that we are not a good
fit, are you comfortable telling me no?"

[At end of meeting]

"Now that you've seen my product, on a scale of 1-10 how good a fit do you
think we are?"

If it's less than a 7, you can either explore their problem more deeply and
see if there's something you missed, or just say:

"So it sounds like that's a no. Am I right? I know we're not a fit for
everyone, so it's okay if the answer is no."

I learned this (and a lot of other stuff) via Sandler Sales Institute several
years ago and have found it's very effective in all kinds of situations, not
just sales.

It's easy to hate on sales as being full of manipulative, pushy people. But
there are good, authentic techniques that work better than just showing up and
giving a demo.

~~~
helen842000
I agree that giving people a "get-out" clause allows for more honest answers.
It pays off because you don't waste your time chasing the 'maybe' that turn
out to be a 'no'.

I think that builds up more trust and pushes more towards a yes than any other
technique.

------
mstroeck
Ugh. Please don't read this and think you know anything about "closing" a
sale. Closing techniques work well for small, unimportant, everyday purchases.

They do not work at all on sophisticated buyers. They might in fact cost you
the sale.

The rule of thumb is: If there is any chance that the prospective customer
might have heard of such a thing as a closing technique - DON'T USE THEM.

~~~
edkennedy
I actually don't think this article falls in the same category as someone
doing "A benjamin franklin close" or a forced close or whatever other closing
technique involves manipulation.

The article states very simply that there are three different ways you can
close a call, hard, medium and soft. It's not a technique, he paints with a
broad brush and leaves the article very open to interpetation and adaptation
to your sales style.

~~~
mstroeck
Exactly my point. All fluff, no informational content.

------
barkingllama
What's wrong with "Thanks for your time and allowing me to discuss product x
with you. Is there any reason why you think this wouldn't be a good fit for
your problem y? I want your business, and I look forward to working with you
further."

~~~
philwelch
Nothing. But without having coded languages and competing to manipulate each
other, sales and business folks wouldn't have much left to do. They call it
"people skills". And while being direct and honest might be a good way to
communicate, it's not nearly as challenging, so it's not a "people skill" and
the Harvard Business Review would have nothing left to write about.

~~~
barkingllama
So frustrating that you have to virtually manipulate people to accomplish a
goal that ultimately both of you want.

------
larrys
"With experienced buyers, consider a softer close because how many times do
you think they have heard "this is our best and final offer" and every other
type of hard close before?"

I have yet to find a professionally trained salesman that has called on me
that doesn't immediately telegraph that he has read some book, took some
course, or is following some technique he learned somewhere. After a while it
sounds to any experienced ear phony. In the same way a politician sounds
phony.

Sales is all nuance and it's really difficult to master without spending
considerable time actually doing it and building knowledge about what works
for you in a given situation (which may not work for someone else in the same
situation because of delivery of message among many other variables).

------
Maven911
My own favorite sales technique to find out the upper range of a buyer is to
casually ask 'up to' when they reveal their budget

~~~
jesseendahl
Which is why as a buyer, I never even get close to giving a real answer to
this question =)

------
maeon3
Some people, (edit) men/women do this so much that I punish the behavior.
Instead of then saying "I would rather you not do X" they come up with some
cryptic encoded message that leaves you wondering why they said it and what
they want. The one issuing cryptic messages often gets angry when things do
not change the way they expected. When people do this to me, I go out of my
way to not read their mind and not give them what they want. If you are going
to communicate like a 6 year old then expect that you wont always get your
way.

~~~
ajross
And people wonder why women feel excluded from technical forums. Yikes.

(The edit makes it better, but the fact that this was written about "some
women" in the abstract who need to be "punished" for doing it remains really
disturbing. This was a complete tangent to the linked article, not a point
that really needed to be made. How would you react if you pulled up a forum
comment where the top post talked about how "Some geeks are so socially
awkward that I can't understand them. So I punish them for it". See the point?
What you did was deliberately exclusionary: it's just plain mean. Stop it.)

~~~
philwelch
If I did find a comment like that, complaining about a predominantly male
behavior on a forum for some female-dominated hobby/profession/interest, I
wouldn't be surprised or outraged. Some patterns of behavior are more common
among one sex than the other; some of those patterns of behavior bother the
opposite sex; sometimes people complain about things that bother them.

~~~
ajross
Which is what I'd expect you to say to your peers on the predominately male-
dominated forums you frequent. :) I suspect (based on my own personality) that
your personality isn't nearly so confident when you're out of your comfort
zone. Now picture a world where that zone outside your comfort is an important
part of the career path.

To tickle the startup thing: picture a site where a bunch of VCs sit around
talking about money stuff. You want to get into that world and you know you
need to be part of this site to do it. Yet half the time you start posting you
find the people you want to interact with complaining about how infuriating
"tech people" are to deal with. Think hard about what you'd do: jump into the
conversation anyway or just stay silent until you have something "serious" to
say? I know what I'd do.

~~~
philwelch
> just stay silent until you have something "serious" to say

That's my MO on any new forum. I only stopped following that rule on HN as HN
itself got increasingly sillier.

And really, your VC example, in reverse, is in full display on HN. There are
always articles complaining about unfair shit that VC's pull, and VC's
probably talk about unfair shit founders pull. The proper response, assuming
you're a VC that doesn't pull unfair shit, is to say "yeah, I hate that shit
and I never do that." Look at how Peroni (a recruiter) contributes to the
perennial complaining-about-recruiters threads.

The OP is about using indirect, passive-aggressive communication techniques to
close sales. I think it's fair game to complain about indirect, passive-
aggressive communication techniques and the people who use them, and if
someone observes that it tends to be women more often than men, so be it. If
you're a woman who doesn't use indirect, passive-aggressive communication
techniques, you come into this thread in the same position that Peroni comes
into the multitude of threads about how useless recruiters are.

~~~
ajross
(late reply to late reply, but I couldn't let this one go)

' _I think it's fair game to complain about indirect, passive-aggressive
communication techniques and the people who use them_ "

Good grief. No. Just no. Not when the "people who use them" are generalized
(maeon3 didn't even hedge with "tend to" like you did) to half the species.

Sorry, that's not objective argumentation, it's plain bigotry.

Would you have stepped up in the same way if he had jumped into to say the
darkies are lazy and dumb? That the muslim faith is evil?

I'll just repeat my original "yikes" and leave it at that. People like you
make me sad for humanity.

~~~
philwelch
I don't think he implied anywhere that all or even most women (mis-)
communicate that way, but rather that most people who mis-communicate that way
are women. That _is_ a fair observation, and similar comments about men
largely pass without comment.

~~~
ajross
The original post has been edited, but the phrasing was "some women [do this],
so I punish them for it". And he went on to use the female pronouns
throughout. It was a rant, not an argument. And there wasn't even a tiny nod
to the idea that anyone other than a woman would be so afflicted.

