Hi guys, what do you think is the best thing you can recommend me to increase my close rate, I am selling a tangible product but my close rate is not so good.
Increase close rate
Hi Duvan. I think there are three main things to focus on when trying to increase your close rate: knowing your ideal customer, confidence/perspective, and not wasting time on duds. It’s important to know who your ideal customer is so you can determine if they are a good fit for your product. The faster you can determine if and exactly how they will benefit from your specific business and product, the easier it will be to sell. Going off of that, if you are confident in your product, your prospects will be at ease and trust you more. If you are able to assess their needs and goals, and confidently point out exactly how your product can fill those needs and goals along with showing you are there for them, the more likely they will trust you and the benefits of your product. Approaching it with the mindset of “Let me see what you need and how we can help that” rather than “What can I say that will convince you to buy” is extremely important. There are almost always ways they can benefit from your product, but coming across as someone who just wants to sell is not as attractive as coming across as someone who seems like they can really help. That being said, don’t waste too much time on people who are never going to buy. I’m not saying don’t try, but know when to cut it short. If they aren’t an ideal client, the sooner you move on to better opportunities, the better.
Going off of what Graysonf said, I agree that knowing your ideal customer is important when determining whether a prospect is worth spending time on. But more importantly, you need to focus on your customers pain points and find a way to relate it back to your product rather than listing features and trying to sell it. So focus on consultative selling rather than transactional selling. This involves listening and asking discovery questions, questions that reveal what’s causing them pain and then slowly moving toward how your product can solve that. This method makes you seem genuine in your desire to simply help the customer rather than sell your product. Another good strategy is to try and catch customers when they realize they have a problem but have yet to start looking for solutions. Good books to reference for more info on how to do this are SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham and Shift! by Craig Elias. The former focuses on discovering the customers’ pain to sell, while the latter focuses on timing and trying to leverage what stage of the buying cycle the customer is in.
I think I need more context to give you a proper answer here. Why do you think you’re not closing as many deals as you should? Are your prospects throwing any recurrent objection to you? Are you following up with them enough?
These are important aspects to keep in mind that will put you on the right track.
In my opinion, many deals don’t close because sales people don’t follow up enough with their prospects and deals go cold. I read this shocking stat recently: Most deals require 5 follow-ups or more before they close. Are you following up with your prospects enough? Also, I think it’s important to keep a balance between following up often and being pushy. No one likes pushy salespeople (no one likes pushy people in general!), so you should always personalize your folllow-ups and provide your prospects with something really valuable. Otherwise, they’ll avoid your emails and calls like the plague!
Take a look at your follow up process and have another rep on your team (preferably the one with the highest close rate) take a look at it. But take into consideration that what works for them may not work for you. They may have generated more interested in the client in the first place, priming them for effective follow ups.