E216: Why Closing Deals On the Spot is a Powerful Tool to Grow Sales for Every Trade Sales Leader: Sales, Leadership, Trade

In this episode, we're going to explore why closing deals on the spot is a super powerful tool to grow sales for every trade sales leader. Welcome to Sales Growth Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction and industry sales and business leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, and over the last 15 years, I've helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses, and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes. Let's get started. Today's episode's really based on an experience I had with one of my customers recently. They were based down the southern part of Australia. They were a good-sized business, right? I won't say names, I won't go into detail, but they were certainly, they'd moved from 6 into 7 figures and were very, very close to 8 figures. And this customer gave me some feedback that one of their team members had presented a deal that was worth almost $800,000 and signed it on the spot. So they were able to present a design and a quotation on the spot. Now that deal had a couple of steps to it. There was an onsite meeting followed by a design and quotation meeting together. And generally for deals that big, that's how it rolls. But today what we're actually going to focus on, particularly for deals that are $50,000 and under, we're going to have a look at some of the key strategies that will help you close more deals by quoting on the spot. So then and there when you meet a customer and then talk about some of the impacts that that can have to you in your business, all right, and your future sale. So I loved it when I heard that quote from a customer, of course, right? We'd gone through an extensive process and they were able to move the dial to the tune of $800,000 in one meeting, right? Pretty amazing and wow, were they happy. But what it really got me thinking is that this is a great topic for me to talk about with particularly businesses who are quoting in that $0,000 to $50,000 and up to $100,000 range is your bread and butter quote size, right? Lots and lots of businesses out there that are quoting between that, and I'll be even more specific, that are quoting between that $10,000 and $50,000 mark, right? And wonder whether or not you can get deals closed on the spot. I'd certainly say that my experience says if your quotes are under $10,000, there is huge opportunities and almost business as usual opportunities to be closing deals on the spot. It gets a little bit more tricky the higher your dollar value goes. So what we're going to run through today is 3 strategies that you can use to help you increase your ability to not only quote on the spot, but get decisions on the spot. So as we're talking about how we make this happen, I want to be really open that not every deal is going to be quotable on the spot or closable on the spot. However, the challenge that I'm throwing out there today is for you to think about when you could make this happen in your business. When are the moments where you might be able to quote on the spot? When are the moments where you might be able to go to a quote presentation meeting, i.e., you're going back for your second meeting, and get confirmation of a deal done then and there? And my job is to give you 3 ideas, 3 levers that can help you do that. So let's roll into it. The first one that I want to look at is how we can pre-prepare our customer to be ready to make decisions. We call it pre-seeding, but it's all about having a discussion with a customer that determines where they are in their buying cycle. Are you ready to go? Are you just looking? Are you somewhere between just looking and ready to go? Where are you at in terms of that stage of thinking about your buying? And where we have customers that say, hey, I'm in the market, I'm going to buy, it's just a question of who I buy from. Straight away, that provides an opportunity for me as a salesperson to think, great, we can try and move this customer towards the position they want to be in, i.e., comfortable to decide on us, a little bit quicker than in the other examples. So when we can precede that we know that a customer is ready to go and we can start to talk to them before we meet or before we go back for that second presentation around what are the important things that we need to speak about to help them make a decision, well then we're signposting with a customer that we're going to help them move to that spot. So examples of this include when we're speaking with a customer, questions along the lines of, what's most important for you to understand before you can make a decision? What are the things you want to work through to be able to decide on what's next? What's really important that we get right for you to say, yep, I'm ready to go? You can ask this question in so many different ways, but it's asking well in advance of when you're meeting for the customer to tell you what they need. Do they need a quote? Do they need to understand what a product looks like? Do they need to know installation timeframes? Do they need to understand payment terms? Do they need to know terms and conditions? But when we're talking with our customers really openly, about what they need to do, know, or understand before they make a decision. We're preparing them that we're going to come in and talk about that. And as importantly, we're preparing ourselves to make sure we can go through that with the customer. And certainly a level up on this preceding strategy, if you like, is to be handling anything you can with a customer before you meet them. So certainly things that are not business critical or decision critical, like payment terms and price and getting samples in their hand, We can talk to them about these before we even get to site. Right, here's our terms and conditions, here's our payment terms, you know, is there anything that's going to be impactful for you that we should talk about before we get to site for payment or terms? Right, so we can start to have those discussions with customers before we make— it moves the customer along their journey. I certainly don't advocate pushing them along the journey, but when you're able to ask them voluntarily what they need to do to make that decision, then we're moving ourselves closer to being able to close in that next meeting. Second one is around setting expectations before the meeting, and that comes down to again asking questions, right? What would you like to get from this meeting? And where we have customers that say they're ready to go, right, and I'd like to move myself forward so I can make a decision about who I use, perfect opportunity for us to say, fantastic, right? Tell me what we need to go through. Now, it certainly builds on the preceding question from earlier, but where we can ask the customer what they want from that meeting Right? And then perhaps set that expectation that says, okay, here's what I'm going to do, here's what I'm going to bring. Is there anything else you think you're going to need to see from me to get comfortable with who we are? Right? Soft closing. That's a fantastic step to move our customers forward. So by the time when we get to them, they are warmer, they are more, perhaps more willing, right, to be making decisions on the spot. So number one is all about preceding them by getting them to be really clear on what they want. The second one comes to setting expectations around what you're going to bring and what you're going to do in and before that meeting. And the third piece is making sure that if we want to be closing deals on the spot, we have the right people in the room. I have worked with so many residential and commercial businesses that fail to ask the question along the lines of, who's getting involved in this? Who's important to meet with so you're comfortable with what you want to do next? Of course, we can ask in a very binary manner who's involved in the decision. But I think there's a much better way to do that by asking who else needs to be there. Is there anyone else that we need to meet? Who else is important in this process? And by asking those questions, we are setting up to get the decision makers in the room because of course when we get an answer to those questions, we try to make sure they're present. Now being present in person is of course the best option, but FaceTiming, no problems with that. Getting them on the phone, no problems with that. Or having them at least see some key information before you get there. Not quite as impactful, but no problems with that. But certainly when we're able to have the right people in the room when we're meeting, our ability to close on the spot is significantly greater. Because quite simply, if someone who's involved in the decision isn't there, that decision won't be made. It won't be made until they have been brought up to speed with exactly what you've proposed, right, and what anyone else who's important in the process would like to do. So if we try and close them back out around how closing deals on the spot is a really powerful tool for growing sales, particularly in trade businesses, I think the main piece I want to leave here as a takeaway is that in general, deals that are closed more quickly will close more frequently than deals that take a longer period of time. So i.e., businesses that have deals that close in 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 days are generally going to have higher close rates than businesses who quote deals based on 30, 60, 90 days. Now it's certainly not locked concrete, but it's what we generally see because we have momentum that's built in those sales processes. Customers are there, they're interested, they're inquiring, they're engaged, they're motivated, they're sometimes excited. When we can move things forward quickly, we get to benefit from that momentum. So closing deals on the spot will generally see our customers that we work with also grow their sales. And it's not 1 or 2% that we see sales close rates growing, but it's generally 10 to 15 to 20% that we see increases in close rates from 20% to 40%, for example. And the 3 areas that we see businesses really doing this well is around pre-seating customers. So by making sure that you're really clear on what they want and they get to know you before you get there, setting some expectations around what you're going to do in that meeting to step customers along, and then making sure the people that are involved in the process, i.e., the decision makers, are in the room. Now, the reality is that a lot of trade businesses can't quite nail this because leaders are so busy that a lot of this process doesn't happen prior to the meeting. And the results that we see is not surprising, is that close rates are generally lower. So for our listeners, we provide a free quote audit that will help them move past that frustration and that stress of not getting deals closed and generally provide a 20 to 30% bump in sales. It's free, it's super easy to do just by clicking on the link at the top of our show notes. So if that's for you, please go ahead and book in some time now. If not, please keep thinking about how you can be 1% better each and every day. We spend the majority of our time Finding simple ways that you can improve your business. That's it for today. Look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now.