Closing is simple. What’s difficult is dealing with the negative emotions that you’re having about closing. Those emotions include.
- Fear of failure. If I lose this sale, it means that I’m a failure as a sales professional.
- Fear of rejection. If I lose this sale, it means that the customer doesn’t like me.
- Fear of financial loss. If I lose this sale, I won’t make the commission and my kids won’t eat.
- Fear of management disapproval. If I don’t make quota, my boss will be unhappy.
- Fear of lost anticipation. If I don’t make the sale, I’ll lose the pleasant fantasy of winning.
- Fear of social blundering. If I ask at the wrong time, the customer will think I’m pushy.
The unifying factor in all these emotions, of course, is fear. The specific quality of that fear differs from person to person. Some folk don’t care that much about social rejection , for example, but hate, hate, hate to lose a commission. Other folk are happy to take a financial loss as long as they don’t have look like a fool in front of a customer. However, regardless of the particular size and shape of your fears, the solution is the same:
Rule #3. Overcome Your Fear. Regardless of how uncomfortable you are or how terrible you might feel if your close doesn’t result in a sale, the truth is that YOU HAVE TO CLOSE. It’s part of the job, no matter how much it’s scaring you. So just do it, dammit.
Closing is like standing on the edge of a cold swimming pool. Slowly lowering yourself in the water is slow torture; better to just take a deep breath and jump.
Or, to use another analogy, closing is like walking across a bed of hot coals. (I actually did this at a sales seminar.) If you walk quickly you’ll be fine, but if you dawdle you’ll end up with a couple of size 11 blisters.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you should gird up your loins and blurt out “so how about it?” ten minutes into the first meeting. Effective closing is all about timing, which is what we’ll be discussing tomorrow.
