Is Your Closing Approach Too Complex?
Are Closing Techniques Like Diets?
I am a fitness buff, and unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 30 years you know that there are countless diets and other dietary or nutritional products promising all kinds of miraculous results. In my quest for better and better fitness, I have learned (and tried) many of these diet and fitness solutions. It’s now a hobby to analyze each new diet, gadget, and technique to understand their underpinnings and how much truth, practicality, and hype exist in each.
Unfortunately, a huge percentage of these products are garbage. Many of them have an idea or principle that is valid, but the results are blown way out of proportion in relation to what can truly be achieved using these solutions. On the other hand, some actually work…
If It’s Too Complicated No One Will Use It
Take diets for example, there are quite a number of them with merit. The problem is that some diets are ridiculously complicated and too difficult to maintain, let alone adopt as an ongoing lifestyle. All the current leaders in fitness and nutrition now agree that the ease of going on and maintaining a diet is a major factor (if not the major factor) in the creation of a successful diet. If people can’t effectively start or maintain the diet, it doesn’t matter how effective it could be because they won’t be able to sustain it. And that, my friends, is why I am going on and on about diets in an article about advancing the sale—because closing techniques suffer similar complications.
Name any book on closing, and odds are, I’ve read it. There are books with hundreds of sales closes in them, each with their own clever name, like the board of nails close, or the one-dollar-for-one-hundred-dollars close, or my all-time favorite the Atomic-what-would-Jesus-do-BOMB close (no, I’m not kidding).
Someday, to give you a good laugh and protect the innocent souls out there who might actually consider using one of these gems, I’ll put up a website with a Sales Closing Wall of Shame listing all of the ridiculous closes I’ve collected over the years.
Closing Confusion
Just like the diets, most of these closes are garbage—and by garbage, I mean counter-productive. They will actually hurt your chances of closing the sale. But also like the diets, some of these techniques actually work from time to time. And thus, the confusion sets in.
Some of these old-school closes are very elaborate, are specialized for particular situations, and require intricate setups. Some take hours to execute. This is again where they are like diets. If there is too much to remember, or they are too complicated to execute, then no one will use them. Who wants to take the time to memorize one-hundred-and-one closes—one for every possible situation? What if in the heat of the moment I use the wrong one? Oh, the pressure!
It’s a waste of time and effort to use what amounts to a counter-productive close 90% of the time. It is also totally unnecessary.
The Criteria For A Good Close
A good closing approach should meet the following criteria:
- It should pace at the rate the customer ready for
- It should be facilitative & non-manipulative
- It should be easy
Sadly the above criteria, simple as it is, eliminates 99% of the closing techniques out there.
That last point is what we are focusing on here. The approach must be easy enough to follow so that when it comes time to actually use the approach, it’s natural and simply second nature. That eliminates all the stress and frustration associated with closing that we sometimes feel.
CLOSING TIP: Helping a customer move towards their goal is an act of service. It shouldn’t be difficult or stressful at all. It should be easy.
