Video Transcript
If I say the words, "You need to close the sale," what a lot of you hear is, "I need to get a ‘yes.’" And that's where the whole idea of closing goes wrong.
The role of a salesperson is not about getting a “yes.” When we say closing the sale, it's really about getting a decision. But for me to be effective, I have to be a good decision-making facilitator rather than somebody who gets lots of yeses.
So here's the mindset problem that I have to fix first. When I go into a sales meeting, I have to be thinking--
"I want to make sure that this is the right thing for both us and the prospect." Not just "I want to get a yes."
Do you really want someone to say yes to someone you won't be able to help or service properly?
So if I'm going into a meeting and I think, "OK, I'm only going to sell this to them if it's a perfect fit—if it makes sense. I'm going to walk through the decision-making process with my prospects to make sure that they see it that way and that I see it that way. And unless we both see it as something that makes sense, I'm not going to sell to them."
If I'm approaching it from that perspective, the prospect is not seeing me put pressure on them. They see me as a helpful consultative person. They're not seeing that I'm all about what I want and not what they want.
Walk them through the criteria of "these are the things that mean yes. These are the things that say no." Make sure that's very clear to them and guide them through those little steps in decision-making so that if it is a perfect fit, it's a "yes." And if it's not, we probably shouldn't do it.
If you just change your focus to that, you end up getting a lot of good decisions as opposed to bad decisions, as opposed to yes's and no's.
