The Double Whammy: Closing Skeptical Prospects Before Year-end

It’s tough enough that prospective buyers have become more skeptical toward vendors over the last few years. Now layer onto that the salesperson’s need to achieve quota before the ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and you have a classic double whammy that could impact the salesperson’s ability to close sales prior to calendar year-end.

So, what is a sales professional supposed to do? You still have two and a half months to “git-er-done.” Though would suggest that how you choose to interact with these customers in the next few weeks may be more important than any of the eleventh-hour closing tactics that traditional approaches sometimes advocate.

What if there were a better way – something other than being left with the last ditch effort of trying to win the business by dropping the price? The key to wrapping up a business transaction within a reasonable timeframe has more to do with the simple concept of perceived value.

Some salespeople are surprised when Question Based Selling suggests that your product or service has no  actual value. Don’t be offended. There is no such thing as actual value. A product or service is only valuable (to customers) to the extent that they perceive it to be. For example, when one of your prospects finds your offering to be extremely valuable, your chances of making a sale within your targeted timeframe goes way up. Of course, if they perceive little or no value, then your probability of success will surely diminish.

This realization that skeptical customers tend to hold salespeople off at arm’s length changes the equation with respect to closing sales. It’s no longer enough to host a sales call, give a demo, provide references, and then ask for the order. That’s what your competitors are doing. Granted, you can still win a sale using traditional methods. But for me, I would much rather use an approach that gives me an unfair advantage.

Here it is in a nutshell. Perceived value is directly related to the customer’s perceived need for your offering. If, for whatever reason, the customer has a distinct and immediate need for your product or service, then they will feel some sense of urgency to move forward with a purchase transaction. If, however, their need is moderate or passive, then timeframes tend to slip as deals are pushed to the side burner. It’s also true that as the customer’s need becomes more pressing, the issue of budget suddenly becomes less of an obstacle.

I’m not suggesting that you can close every sale you get involved with, because that’s unlikely. Frankly, if you close every deal, then your price is either too low or you’re not calling enough customers. Me, I just want to win more than my fair share. You do this by having an unfair advantage somewhere in the sales process.

In Question Based Selling, our advantage comes from depth of conversation. It’s likely that the customer has business issues that your product or service addresses. Identifying those issues is just the tip of the iceberg, however. What you really want to understand is “why” a particular issue is important to your customers. People have different goals, priorities, and agendas for making purchase decisions. That said, it’s pretty easy to identify the key decision factors for almost any business—whether it has something to do with productivity, security, cost effectiveness, operational efficiency, compliance, etc. Just knowing the key issues puts you on par with your competitors, however.

The real question that needs to be understood is “why” an issue like productivity might be important to this particular client? You must be careful how you ask, however, because rhetorical sales questions can erode one’s credibility very quickly. To alleviate this risk, you can simply say, “Mr. Customer, besides the obvious goal of increasing your company’s productivity, what specifically are you trying to accomplish with this type of solution?” Bingo!

Customers will cite specific implications that relate to productivity, like increased ROI or quicker time to market. But what are the chances customers will name 9 or 10 implications in response to your one question? The answer is it’s not likely. You have to believe that there must be 10+ reasons why productivity might be important to a customer. But most customers will only mention one or two, and sometimes three. Who’s going to bring up the other implications of productivity—things like profitability, marketshare, gaining a competitive advantage, or decreasing the cost of goods sold?

If not you, you leave the door wide open for someone other than yourself to be seen as a more valuable resource. You also risk customers maintaining the status quo because they don’t have a sense of urgency to move forward with a purchase decision. So, over the next few days or weeks, you might want to focus on expanding the customer’s needs, in order to increase the perceived value of your product or service and also their sense of urgency for making a decision.