10 Closing techniques in sales examples for your business : Summary of this Article
• There are various sales closing techniques such as kill the objection in advance,70/30 rule approach, landmine approach, hard to get approach, summary close approach.
• As per the 70/30 approach, let your customer speak more and you should listen to him. He speaks 70% while you speak 30% to maintain a healthy balance.
• In the landmine approach, you need to explain the competitive advantage of your product to the customer.
• AIDA is also known as the “Elevator pitch sales technique”. You should explain your point in 1 minute in such a way that the product is sold.
• In the middle approach, you don’t need to show the actual product that you want to sell. You have to show some other products to your customers such as an expensive product and a cheap product.
• Every approach has its own benefits and you should understand your customer properly before applying any of these approaches.
10 Closing techniques in sales examples for your business:
The sales closing techniques can change the game.These 10 sales closing techniques are discussed as follows:
1. Soft close vs. hard close approach
2: Kill the objection in advance
3: 70/30 Rule approach
4: Landmine approach
5: Summary close approach
6: Hard to get approach
7: Quality close approach
8. AAAFTD
9: 3 V’s approach
10. WIIFM
1: Soft close vs. hard close approach
1. Soft close:
In the soft-close approach, you need to ask a low impact question to your customer.
For example:
“Do you want to know more about this product?”
• Now, the customer will not fear in knowing about your product.
• He will feel that you don’t have sold the product to him.
• You are only trying to provide him information about the product.
The soft-close approach will provide two benefits:
• You will get to know if the customer is serious or not.
• You will get a chance to explain your product.
2.Hard close:
• This approach is an accounting technique.
• For example, you say that the sale will be closed on 31 January or 31 march, etc.
• This boosts the sales cycle and people buy the product quickly.
2: Kill the objection in advance
• You should know the objections that might arise about your product.
• For example, people complain that the product is very expensive or low quality.
• So, you need to prepare a script or anti-dot about how to face these objections in advance.
• You should explain your point indirectly before the customer puts any objection.
• So, you have killed the objection in advance.
• This approach is also known as the “opinion before pitching approach.”
• When your product is new and you have no idea about what objections can be there, you can take the opinion of your customer in the initial 30 seconds.
• Now, you can take your opinion in the first 30 seconds and kill the objections by explaining to him about your anti-dots.
• There is a “Next step close approach” where you try to sell your product and take the customer’s opinion about the next step.
You should follow the LAIR model :
• L: Listen (listen carefully to your customer)
• A: Acknowledge (acknowledge his objection)
• I: Identify objection (identify his objection)
• R: Reverse objection ( don’t reply rather reverse his objection)
3: 70/30 Rule approach
• As per the 70/30 approach, let your customer speak more and you should listen to him.
• He speaks 70% while you speak 30% to maintain a healthy balance.
• The salesperson is learning about how to win the agreement. This is important for making sales and maintaining a relationship.
• This is also known as the “empathy close approach”. You should listen to the customer’s point of view.
• You should put your feet into the customer’s shoes.
• Ask him a question and then listen to him carefully.
• When he is finished with his thoughts, communicate your message.
• With the help of active and deep listening, you can identify the needs, goals, preferences, biases, beliefs, values of your customer.
• Also, you can observe his body language as the body tells the real feeling.
Golden statement
It is no longer about interrupting, pitching & closing. It is about listening, diagnosing, and prescribing.
So, when you talk you are only repeating what you know but when you listen, you may learn something new.
4: Landmine approach
• In the landmine approach, you need to explain the competitive advantage of your product to the customer.
• This is also called the “value edge approach”.
• You can explain to your customer about 30% of unique items that your competitor doesn’t have.
• So, you have to create an impact on this item of competitive advantage in the brain of the customer.
• You can discuss all the points that differentiate your product and the customer will get the reason to switch.
• This will work as a landmine because the through of your product will be running in the mind of your customer.
5: Summary close approach
• In this approach, you have to summarise the features and benefits of your product again and again.
• For example, you summarise the features and close, again summarise, and close. Now, the customer will buy the product.
• The feature is a technology specification and the benefit is a feel-good factor that makes the customer buys a product.
This is also known as FAT that refers to:
• F: Feature: What is the Technical specification of product?
• A: Advantage: How it is better from the competition?
• B: Benefit: What is the positive feeling that gives relief to the customers?
• You should give less time to feature and advantage, and more time to the benefit.
For example:
• If you sell a pen, a rubber grip is the feature of pen and the benefit is that it will be comfortable to customers.
• If you open a 24*7 store, the benefit is customers can buy the product at any time.
• If you sell a phone, explain the benefit of the cord core processor due to which phone will never hang.
6: Hard to get approach
• In this approach, you need to stop calling your customer.
• You need to behave like an angry wife who has stopped talking to her husband and husband tries to make out things.
• It involves one more approach known as “best time to close approach”.
• You need to identify a trigger of your prospect’s life.
• That means, now is the right time to buy the product.
For example:
• During COVID 19, the digital teams of Bada Business explained customers about the importance of digital learning to the businessman.
• It has massively sold its digital learning courses during this COVID 19 situation.
• You can create sense of urgency as well.
Golden statement
Either you have a sense of urgency today or a sense of regret tomorrow. Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.
7: Quality close approach
• In this approach, you explain your product quality to the customer.
• This is also known as the “Artisan close approach”.
• You explain your product in an artistic way.
• It requires the art, skill, and ability that are used to make your product.
For example:
• Before selling the product, Kashmiri artists explain their artwork to customers in such a manner that he believes in their quality.
• The customer believes in their quality and buys the product.
Golden statement
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
8. AAAFTD
• AAAFTO means “Always always ask for the order.” It means you won’t get an order from the customer until you ask.
For example:
• You have to behave like a life insurance person while asking for an order.
• They ask their relatives again and again for the order.
• Similarly, you should always ask for an order from your customer.
This approach is also called the “calculator close approach.”
During the conversation, you start calculating the value of the product.
During communication, a salesman starts calculating and tells the customer that he will get a product worth Rs.100, 000 for Rs. 78,000.
9: 3 V’s approach
The 3 V’s of this approach are Verbal, visual, and vocal communication with your customer. You communicate 7% verbal, 55% visual, and 38% vocal.
Golden statement
Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.
During verbal communication, you need to take care of words, speech, language, and content.
You need to focus on your volume, tone, pitch, inflection, voice quality, modulation, rate of the pitch while vocal communication.
Visual communication involves body language, posture, facial expression, proximity, appearance, and eye contact.
For example:
• While talking on the phone, you are not visual rather you are only vocal.
• So, your tone is very important to sell your product.
• Here 84% is your tone and 16% is your verbal.
To sum up it can be as follows:
• Verbal: It is not just what we say.
• Vocal: It is how we say.
• Visual: How do we look when we say it?
10. WIIFM
WIIFM – What is in it for me?
You should make a customer vision sheet.
This is also known as NICE analysis wherein:
• N stands for need
• I stands for interest
• C stands for concern
• E stands for expectation.
For example:
• All Successful businessman prepares a WIIFM sheet before doing business with customers.
• They understand their customer’s requirements before making sales.
Golden statement
Make it about them. Not make it about me.
Conclusion:
• Implement 10 sales closing approaches in your business
• Try to understand your customer before applying any sales closing approach.