Secret Closing Techniques

An article, “Secret Closing Techniques,” caught my eye.  I’ve never really had any trouble closing, but I’m always looking to improve.

Some expert had discovered the secrets to closing deals.  Deals you’ve worked through but just can’t close.  Summarizing the “secrets,”  Stories, Curiosity, Sense of Urgency.

I reread the article several times, thinking I may have misunderstood.

Don’t get me wrong, stories, curiosity, sense of urgency are all critical things to do in the sales process.  But this author wrote about them as the secrets in closing.

As I reflected on the article, I thought, perhaps if we use these much earlier in the process, we don’t have to use them for closing, we just get the customer to move forward.

For example, unless there is a high sense of urgency, a compelling need to do something, the opportunity isn’t real.  We would be wasting the customer’s time and ours by continually pitching and dragging them through our sales process, creating a sense of urgency at the end.  Being lazy, I thought it’s much easier to work with a customer who says, “I have to do something now,” rather than trying to twist their arms at the end of the process.

Likewise, curiosity something we leverage throughout the sales process.  In fact, curiosity is probably one of the most powerful tools in getting the customer to realize they should change, getting them into a buying cycle.  Things like, “Why are you doing things this way?”  “What would happen if you changed–the way you do things–your point of view–your assumptions about customers,…?”  “Have you ever thought of…?” “Imagine what you could achieve if you tried…..”

Curiosity, engaging the customer in conversations about what they do, why they do, what their problems are, their goals, their dreams, their challenges, their aspirations is the way we learn.  It’s also a powerful way to get the customer to reflect and learn.  So it seems curiosity shouldn’t just be held in reserve as a secret closing technique, but rather as a powerful way to engage our customers all the time.

Then stories, again, my thoughts are, “Why wait?”  Stories take abstract ideas and transform them into things we can understand.  They take facts, figures, and data and enable the customer to visualize what they mean, how they work, what they could achieve.

Stories, curiosity, urgency are critical from the earliest stages of customer engagement and continue through the whole process.  Perhaps if we leveraged them effectively, we wouldn’t be worried about Secret Closing Techniques.