The Most Effective Closing Tactic

When your prospect is closing herself, don’t interrupt her. Letting a buyer close themselves is the most effective closing tactic. It allows the buyer to be in control, prevents buyer’s remorse, and takes the pressure off the SME. 

If you interrupt the buyer, the sale almost always go awry.  

Case in point, a team member had been offered an advertising opportunity that looked promising. It was a $15,000 spend for a small company, so the small business buyer spent a few days determining how to ensure a great return on the spend. They even brought in a graphic design contractor and reached out to the advertiser together requesting specifications for the ad. The buyer and designer explained that designer needed the specs to provide a quote for the design work. 

Sounds simple enough, but the seller made the classic mistake. Rather than providing the requested information, she pulled the trigger. She told the buyer to close as a condition of receiving the specs. That alone was a big enough unforced error, but the seller didn’t stop there. She compounded the mistake by pointing to a benefit that the prospect would receive upon closing. This benefit was the least attractive feature of the offering to the buyer. She thought the buyer was interested in her list. But the buyer had already acquired her lead list for pennies. The buyer’s expectation from the advertising spend was to generate brand awareness with the provider’s audience. That way, when the buyer used the lead list, the audience would know who the buyer was. It wouldn’t be a cold call. 

INTERRUPTING CAUSES DOUBT

But when the provider interrupted the buyer at the closing stage, the buyer started to worry. How much brand awareness and promotion was the buyer going to get? The circular containing the advertising normally was distributed at a conference. The conference was to be virtual this year. Would the list turn out for a virtual convention? Were they likely to read the circular if they weren’t a captive audience sitting in a conference room killing time between speeches? How much interest did they really have in the provider’s content? All of a sudden, a prospect who was about to close no longer knew if the offering had value—because of the interruption. 

RECOGNIZE BUYING SIGNALS

If someone is spending money in preparation for doing business with you, that’s a buying signal. It’s no different than if you’re pitching professional services to a company and they inform you that they’re going to hire a contractor to serve as liaison for the representation and that they need some information from you to determine the length and scope of the liaison’s role. That company clearly is trying to determine their total project cost. The last thing you want to do is say something like, “After you become a client, I’ll work with your contractor. And as soon as you close, you’ll get access to our online document library with templates that you can use for routine matters.” 

You see how you’d be interrupting the close? That buyer may have plenty of canned documents and not value your templates very much. Even though they’d browse the library after they paid for access, that feature is not driving the purchasing decision. So the first lesson is don’t interrupt the close and the second lesson is don’t guess at what your prospect values. 

We can and will offer an article on the closing error of misunderstanding the buyer’s motivation because that mistake also often derails a sale. But for now let’s summarize what we’ve learned about interrupting the close. 

SO, THE CLOSING TACTIC IS

When your prospect makes a buying signal, you may be tempted to try to close them right away. Don’t. Your role is not to close the prospect. To the contrary, you’re just supposed to be present and guide the conversation while the prospect closes herself. 

So, here’s how the advertising seller should have responded: “Ok great, I’m happy to get those specs over to you. Do you also need access to the leads so you can prepare to contact them?” (You see the difference? This way, she’s trying to ascertain what the buyer values rather than imposing her values on the buyer.) The buyer likely would have responded that the leads could wait since they were focused on designing an ad that should resonate with the provider’s audience. 

Then, the seller needed to fill the request and wait. It’s okay to wait for your prospect to do their due diligence, budgeting, and other work necessary to justify a spend. So, don’t be trigger happy. Don’t try to close before the prospect is ready. In fact, don’t close at all. Let the prospect do the closing.