5 Strategies to get your sales team closing more sales
Updated: Jul 2, 2020
Top sales people are hard to find and even harder to keep, but if you guide your mediocre performers by giving them a toolkit to implement these strategies...
you will have your CEO celebrating you as the sales leader that everyone wants to work with…. and that huge bonus at the end of the year will be pretty awesome too!
As the end of 2019 looms on the horizon, your sales teams are either going hard to finish the year strong, or building a pipeline for 2020 (if your sales cycle is longer). Either way, when they are working with customers, its always favorable if you can get them closing more deals than they lose. Its more profitable for them, better for your customers, keeps your CEO off your back and everyone's a winner!
So, what can you do to help them improve their close ratio?
Start by teaching every sales person in your business the following 5 strategies:
1. To ask questions that establish what exactly their customer wants as it relates to your product. You’d be surprised how many sales people go straight into pitch mode before establishing what the person in front of them actually wants!
2. To identify whats getting in the way of their customers success and what frustrations is this causing them and any other decision makers in the process.
Whether you are B2B or B2C, you are selling to a human being and human beings get frustrated, worried, anxious or annoyed… they have hopes, fears and dreams. Its at this level that your sales people need to connect.
3. To identify how their key stakeholders will be perceived by their colleagues if they successfully engage with your product or service. If your sales team can figure out where their main contacts sit in the organization and who they need to impress, or avoid disappointing, it will help with positioning and differentiating your product / service.
4. To get clear on what the risk and consequences are, of not engaging with your company and how they will be perceived if they don’t engage (word of caution here, play this small and don’t be a fear monger, keep it factual and respectful – this is about calling your customer to action and helping them avoid the consequences of inaction).
If there’s nothing at stake, why would I buy your product or service? Its likely there are common “stakes” for many of your customers, but you still need to establish and validate them. When it comes to discussions around price, this is a particularly useful time to politely remind a customer whats at stake, afterall, you are there to help them succeed and thats a two way street.
5. How to ask more open questions, be more curious with clients and have the courage of their conviction when it comes to the great value your product or service can provide. Be direct, tell your client the truth even if you think its not what they want to hear. In the long run, you have to challenge some clients to take action and they will thank you for it later.
Are you happy with your sales teams ability to close sales? Are their close ratios leaving you to answer questions from your CEO about all those lost opportunities?
If you need help building sales capability, sales tools, sales scripts or a sales enablement strategy, click here to schedule a discovery call with One Zebra and we’ll talk through your challenges and discuss how we might leverage the power of storytelling and artificial intelligence to get your sales team consistently beating your competition.
In the meantime, click here to check out this customer testimonial video from Tyler (CEO of Turner Adjusting), sharing his experience of working with One Zebra.