How to close sales faster; this is one of the many questions that my audience keeps coming up to me.
They ask, Ramez, how can we close sales faster?
If you want to know how to close sales faster, then listen to this simple formula that I’m gonna share with you.
There is not going to be one specific way to close sales faster however.
One of the things that I can share with you is what is known as the time risk and reward strategy.
So whenever you’re looking at a sales deal, you’ve got to consider the amount of time and effort that you’re going to be investing in order to close that sales deal.
Now, every time you spend time on something, you must understand that it’s taking you away
from spending it on something else right?
So, if I spend my time on an opportunity, we must ask, well what’s the risk of this opportunity going good or the risk of it going bad?
Of course, if the risk is low, it’s better than if the risk is high; and then the last bit is going to be the size of payoff.
So of course, if the risk is high, and the payoff is low, then don’t waste your time.
But, if you can find opportunities where the amount of effort and time that you’re going to spend pursuing is low to medium, and the reward of you investing your time on that is medium to high, then voilá.
These are the opportunities that you want to go after.
So, how do you make sure that you get the most out of your time and money?
Well, there are certain strategies that you want to put in place.
I’ll share with you a story of one of my clients that attended my Certified Sales Training Program called Systematic Selling Strategies.
My student, after completing the course, came to me and shared the following story:
In their request for proposal (RFP), a potential client wanted a certain product and service.
Now typically, when the request for proposal comes in, it’s sent also to many other suppliers.
In the past, this student and his sales team would submit a quotation; this would still take considerable time and effort and in an RFP situation, your chances of you closing that deal are less than 10% sometimes.
But, in this case, the student applied his new sales learning and identified that he knew an actual person on the inside of the client’s company (the company that had released the RFP).
The student knew an inside contact, and in turn, the inside contact knew one of the decision-makers and spoke with him.
The student eventually got to meet the decision maker and highlighted an important fact that the decision maker did not realise.
The student said that his organisation would love to submit a quotation against their RFP, but that the client’s payment terms were not feasible for many quality suppliers.
The student continued to explain to the decision maker that in order for suppliers to complete the client’s project, many of the supplier’s sub-contractors would need their money within 90 days or less; but, in the RFP, the client stated payment terms had to be greater than 90 days.
This would in effect put off most of the higher quality suppliers and leave only poorly managed suppliers in interest to submit quotations against the RFP (the client would then be choosing from a basket of bad eggs).
So guess what?
The decision maker did what nobody would have expected; he actually changed the RFP’s payment terms in line with the student’s advice.
Now the student’s organisation was able to submit their quotation and he even got the deal!
So, in order for you to reduce the amount of time that you spend the risk that you have, you need to become more visible to the key decision makers and stakeholders within the companies that you are selling to.
The more visible you are to the various decision-makers, the easier and less risks you’re gonna have in terms of closing that deal so that you can make more sales.
That’s how you’ll be able to increase your sales and also retain your marginal profitability so that you can provide your clients with the service that they’re looking for.
Not all opportunities go the way you want just because you go running after them.
In many sales occasions, I have decided to say no to certain RFPs and to certain sales opportunities because I knew the amount of time and effort that was needed was too high and the risk of getting the deal was too high and of course the reward wasn’t gonna be worth it.
When you can say no to certain opportunities, automatically you are saying yes to other opportunities and that allows you to be more productive, and make more sales.
If you liked this tip on how to close sales faster, please share it with your sales team.
I’m not saying to say no to all opportunities, but you gotta be clear about what is your ideal customer, and then, the rest becomes history.
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Remember, nothing happens until something is sold; take the first step in taking positive action to help you increase your sales.
