Episode 175: Why Salespeople Fear Asking for the Business—And How to Fix It Fast to Close More Deals

In this episode, you will learn the five ways to increase your close rates. Now. Welcome to Sales Process Made simple the show helping seven to eight figure industry construction and trade. 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, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years. In this episode you will learn why closing isn't automatic for quoted deals, how we can go about focusing more on closing out deals and the five levers you can pull to increase close rates right now. Closing in sales is often a dirty word. I work with a lot of teams who will show a real fear of asking for the business. And what often results out of that is we end up with teams having big pipelines of quoted deals that haven't closed out. There's no yes, there's no no, there's no maybe down the track. But we have a big pipeline of deals that are open because sales teams simply either haven't been confident to ask the question or haven't set up with their customer exactly how and when they're going to get to a yes, no or a maybe on this deal. And I say maybe as being okay because often maybes are not for now. But we want to look at it down the future and we reconvene at that point in time. But the reality is that most salespeople I work with do have some trepidation or some fear around asking exactly when the customer wants to proceed. Hey, we've done a whole lot of work together. Do you like the quote? Yeah, I like it. Fantastic. What would you like to do now? How would you like to get moving? When would you like to proceed? What's your next step? See, a real fear from salespeople asking that. And that as a result means that closing isn't inevitable. It isn't guaranteed once we quote a customer. So as a team, we really need to be focusing on asking for the business that can come in your sales process. That can come through your weekly sales meetings, your one to ones, your deal review meetings. If you don't know what they are, ask me. Get in touch. However, a lot of teams that we work with are simply not putting enough emphasis on talking about closing deals. So if you're one of those teams and you're looking for ways to increase your close rates, here are five things that you can focus on that will absolutely move the dial immediately when it comes to closing more deals. I've been doing this a very long time, have worked with a huge number of businesses, so we're really clear on those levers we can pull to get more deals closing. So what are they? Well, number one. Number one is right at the very start of your funnel and that's about focusing on the fastest possible lead response time. You can, ie, answer the phone if it rings, that is call the customer immediately if you receive a digital lead generation opportunity. That is call the customer immediately if you receive an inbound lead that's not based via phone. The reason I say this is that typically when anyone's going through their purchase process, they are most excited at the time when they first contact suppliers. And we want to make sure that we're building a relationship with these customers. So they are choosing us early and often, ie, they're excited, they're ready to go. We answer the phone, we give them a great experience and the whole journey they are just focusing on us and validating that decision versus worrying about a number of other suppliers and trying to pick who's best. Because if we can build that relationship quickly at the start, we are going to be the ones closing at the other end. Number two is getting clear on the top deliverables. So we're very, very clear on what we need to tick off to get the deal done. Three things. Price time, specs, for example. But when we know exactly what the customer wants, we're then able to line up all of our activities around it, which makes asking for the business much more natural at the right time. The third tip here is making sure we've got all the right decision makers involved and we know what all their deliverables are. So they're very closely linked. And this is something we focused on back in episode 172. In fact, it's a very common theme and the reason it's such a common theme is that I see very few salespeople and sales teams focusing on more than just the decision maker in front of them. They tend to focus on just that person when if they were able to expand that out and engage others, they would find that decisions flow far more quickly because everyone that's involved is comfortable with them moving along. The fourth piece here so that let's do the first three as a recap. Number one is fast response time. Number two is getting clear on the top three deliverables for your customers. And number three is getting all decision makers involved. Number four is agreeing on timing around the outcome. So if we know what our top three deliverables are, it's having the discussion that says, okay, if we can get these three deliverables, price specs and confirmation of delivery time, if we get all of these three nailed, can we get to making a decision? So we're actually agreeing on if we tick off all of these boxes, will you on the other side make your decision? And as we roll into number five, I actually just used that framework there. The framework that I have seen help many individuals, many teams, close more deals is if I will you, if I do something, will you do something? If I tick off each of your three key deliverables, will you be prepared to make a decision by X date? If I do this, will you do that? If I reduce price, if I increase warranty, if I provide you with more value, if I change the color, if I change the specs, will you submit a purchase order, take it to your management for a decision, make the decision yourself, pay the deposit, get moving forward, whatever it may be. The if I will you framework is super, super powerful when it comes to closing out deals and is a strategy, to be honest, just on its own, if that's the only one you implemented, would absolutely move the dial for your close rates. So most teams are not successful in increasing their close rates because in my experience, they, they're often afraid to ask for the business. The reason this happens is because they haven't set the deals up to close early and they've failed to have a customer and salesperson be clear on at what point in time they're making that decision. The five levers we looked at today to help you close deals more quickly are, number one, being a fast response time to leads. Get to them when they're most excited. Number two is be clear on their top deliverables so we can line up our actions around it. Number three is get decision makers involved and be clear on their outcomes. Number four is agreeing that if you tick each of these off, a decision will be made by a certain period of time. And number five is the if I will you framework. If I do something, will you do something in return? We've got to be a little bit careful with that one, that we don't do it on expected things. So they're five levers that will move the dial on your close rates. We've had a bit of a theme over the last month around really focusing on asking great questions, knowing deliverables for customers, decision makers and then deadlines. However, early in the year, these are terrific principles to be making sure we are rock solid on because at the end of the day, we're looking for small 1% better improvements. And if you can get those through just these areas that we've had a few podcasts on, you will grow your sales in the coming 12 months. You will find that your business and absolutely generates more revenue because you've focused on the basic principles. So from today, please try and pick at least one of those five deliverables. If in doubt, pick the if I will you roll it out yourself, roll it out with your team and see what movement it makes on your close rates. And then from there you can roll out any of the other four that you're not already doing. We're dropping podcasts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Short, sharp, chunky, nice and easy to listen to. I'm absolutely, as always, grateful that you tune in and listen to what we have to say. We know that when we make small improvements, that 1% better approach each and every day, that it does make the difference and it does grow our sales. So that's it for today. Look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now. Are you struggling to grow your monthly sales numbers? Feel like you've reached a sales ceiling, are involved in every deal, or have no real sales system in place to help you grow? And and is that causing a level of worry or stress about how you can get more sales in the future? If that's you, that's exactly why we created the Sold Out Sales Teams program to help you get month on month sales growth with less stress. In just the first week, we will lock down your quoting process to grow sales by 25 to 30%. And that's just week one. And for the first three podcast listeners that we speak to, this week will offer you a bonus one on one strategy session with me to make sure you can pay off your investment even faster. Which by the way, for most businesses is only one or two extra sales. To book in, click the link in our show notes. It's a direct calendar link so you can instantly confirm your meeting time.