You will never make a sale if you never close the sale. Closing the sale means simply: Asking your prospect to take the necessary action to complete the sales transaction. This usually means, asking the prospect for the money.

Many sales people are very good at telling people about the product. They are walking encyclopedias of information about the product. This is good…to a point. There comes that time when too much information is just as bad (perhaps worse) than not enough. There is only so much that a customer can absorb in one sitting, and to be blunt, they really don’t want to know every little detail. What they really want to know is one really simple thing: What’s in it for them? If you don’t show them why it’s a very good idea to buy the product, they never will. That means you need to match up their needs with how the product will address and solve those needs.

However, showing them all this, and explaining all this to them, but not asking them to take that next step, only produces a lot of wasted time on both parties. The customer really does want to be told to buy it. More times than not, the sale is made simply by the assumption of the close. By that we mean, after the sales presentation is completed, the salesperson then begins to write the order. If the salesman did their job well, the prospect will simply follow along, and the sale is completed.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always that easy. Customers come up with objections. They are afraid to take the plunge. This can be for various reasons:

1: They were burnt, before, and they are being much more careful, this time. 2: They haven’t been fully shown and convinced that the product meets their needs. 3: They "want to think about it." (That’s a killer objection for many salespeople) 4: It’s the money.

If it’s the first reason, then the salesperson really hasn’t done their job at properly developing their own credibility and trust with the customer. This may be because they didn’t do enough qualifying (asking questions), at the beginning. Maybe they didn’t do a sufficient warm up with them. If the customer doesn’t feel comfortable with the salesperson, it’s going to be VERY HARD to close that sale.

If the reason is they feel they don’t have enough information about the product or service, their objection(s), when they are being asked to buy, will tip the salesperson off as to where more attention is needed so fill in those gaps. Information requests, from a customer are still, technically, objections, but they are the best kind, because they are also buying signals, and a good salesperson can handle these properly and then close the deal.

"Thinking about it" is a SMOKE SCREEN. The customer, for reasons yet unknown, does not want to move ahead with the sale, and rather than give you a definite reason, they will toss out this ambiguous catch-all, hoping you will let them off the hook. Here’s a little tip to remember: When a customer tells you "I want to think about it," what they are actually saying (in a polite way), is for you to go jump in a lake. At this point, the salesperson needs to get more aggressive in finding out exactly what is going on inside the customer’s head. You can’t resolve an objection, if you don’t know what it is.

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