The time you spend in direct communication with your potential customer has the potential to be the most rewarding time invested in your business. Working so hard to create these situations means that you need to look at all of the factors that contribute toward your success in the moments you have created. Great products and services do not sell themselves. When given the opportunity to win the business, you should value it correctly and look to make the very most of it. In this chapter you'll discover strategies, tools, and techniques you can use to turn more of your contacts into contracts.
A common complaint about salespeople is that they are pushy. This description is often a result of an aggressive follow‐up process and is entirely avoidable if you take a more professional approach. By controlling the conversation process, you will very rarely find yourself needing to chase or follow up. In the event you find yourself in a situation requiring follow up, there are ways you can regain that control in a timely and comfortable manner.
Success in the sales process hinges on your ability to control your conversations and steer the thoughts and actions of the buyer. The aim of the game is to be in control throughout the journey and lead your prospect from inquiry through to decision, successfully navigating them through the maze toward the correct outcome to help them in their situation. A common mistake that many make is that they try to cheat on tried‐and‐tested practices by fast tracking. It's easy to believe that your potential customers are looking to make the purchase based solely on price and, on receipt of an inquiry, jump straight to a quotation. You then find yourself in a negotiation about price, an instant sale, or, worse still, complete silence and the end of a conversation. In most circumstances, your customers are looking to make their decision based on the entire value you provide and not just the price itself. One of the most valuable additions to your offer is you as a person, the human touch. Slowing the conversation down and helping them to get to know a little more about you keeps that in your control.
Knowing that people buy from people, you can avoid difficult follow‐up scenarios if you start by building a relationship. Where possible, do this face to face. During this meeting you will build rapport and ask questions to equip yourself with the information you need to make a recommendation to your potential customer. It is at this point, however, that simple mistakes can be made.
Ask questions and listen. Avoid overcommunicating, and learn everything you can about their circumstances.
Some of the best advice I received as a young salesperson was about the importance of listening. Great questions are essential, but if you don't listen to, or benefit from, the answers, then you will never get the maximum benefit from your opportunities. Being a great sales professional has nothing to do with having the “gift of the gab” or “having all the answers.” Success can be maximized by asking great questions and listening to the responses.
Listen is an interesting word as it shares the exact same letters as the word silent. Sometimes that's what listening is: saying nothing at all and allowing your potential customer to continue to share information. Take time to listen and write notes. By really listening, you will hear things that allow you to tailor your recommendations better to their needs, as well as identify countless more opportunities for both now and in the future.
The goal is to put yourself in a position where you can deliver your recommendations in person and not by mail or e‐mail. This means that if you are not in the position to deliver your recommendations in the first meeting, you should arrange a meeting to discuss your findings before leaving and place yourself in the position of controlling the next conversation. Securing the second date while still in the first is far easier than trying to pin it down at a later date.
Upon returning with your recommendations, start by rebuilding the value of the position you held when you left the last meeting. Reconfirm your customer's requirements and then walk them through your recommendations, explaining exactly how you can help them and ensuring they see everything they are getting for their money. Your role is to give them all the information they need to make a decision before asking them to take the next step.
By inviting people to make a decision in the moment, you can eliminate the need for a follow‐up call. The time you invest in controlling this process at the beginning will reward you immensely in improved conversion rates and in less time spent chasing decisions.
Gaining decisions in person is always the goal, but there almost certainly will be times when this is not possible. Your objective is to be involved in the conversation in which the decision is being shared. If you cannot get face to face, then alternatives include scheduled phone calls and video conferencing. However, sometimes you still find yourself faced with the need to send your offer of service and then follow up with the goal of progressing the sale. If this happens, follow these simple tips to increase your results in follow up:
Remember, the biggest reason people do not buy from you is that they remain undecided. Everybody who is stuck in indecision will at some point decide, so if your follow up remains unproductive, don't just stop. Keep these people on a NNT (No Not Today) list and periodically check in with them, add them to your newsletter, and make a personal note in your schedule to revisit in the future. At some point their circumstances will change and they may just need your help. Persistence has certainly proved successful for many before us, and I am sure it will continue to bear fruit in the future.
Big decisions are hard to make. Getting customers to make them can be slow, laborious, and complex. When a customer is looking for a new supplier, they have many decisions to make, but perhaps the most important question they ask is “Why you?” This question is rarely answered before a decision is made.
Referrals, testimonials, and third‐party stories can all add to a consumer's confidence in choosing you, yet still, a decision that involves significant change can be a difficult process for the consumer to navigate. Imagine if you were looking to change from a long‐term and trusted supplier or had an immediate need for a large project. Choosing whom to give your business to becomes a heavy task, and the bigger the decision, the harder it becomes to make.
However, you can often speed up the decision‐making process and win more new customers by making their first step a simple one. Let me demonstrate with a very simple example that I imagine is familiar to you. I am sure that you will have eaten in a restaurant—a great industry full of examples of easy first yeses. What they are looking to secure is the maximum transaction value per table, and so they try to sell drinks, appetizers, more drinks, main courses, more drinks, desserts, and coffees to all customers. Instead of adding all these decisions ahead of time, what they do first is sell table reservations and market key offers to fill those tables. They know that when they fill the tables, they have more chances of selling the food and drinks at various stages throughout your stay. Take a look at your process and see if you are trying to sell the whole meal in one go. Just like in a restaurant, it is difficult to decide on a dessert until after you have finished your main meal.
Great examples of easy first yeses are low‐priced initial transactions that turn your prospects into customers quickly and easily.
Continuing the analogy of the dating game, this is the equivalent of inviting your partner to take a vacation with you before you ask them to move in with you.
By breaking bigger decisions into smaller steps, you can often gain a very quick decision from your prospect, have them experience working with you, and side‐step all of your competition by making yourself the easy choice.
In the medical industry, it is often said that “prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.” Imagine if you visited your doctor and, without asking a single question, the doctor launched into an explanation of how wonderful this new drug was and encouraged you to take the pills twice a day. I imagine you would be a little confused and less than confident about following the recommendations of your doctor.
As an alternative, if the doctor were to sit you down, learn about your symptoms, run some tests, and then make the exact same recommendation, your confidence in following the advice would be significantly greater.
My personal definition for selling is “earning the right to make a recommendation.” This means that you should never introduce your offer of a product or service without having a confirmed, customer‐centric reason first. Your framework for recommending anything to anyone should always be “Because of the fact that you said ABC, what we recommend is XYZ.” This structure means that a large part of every sales conversation is focused on you gathering evidence to support your recommendation.
Questions are so important in stopping you guessing and ensuring that you earn the right to recommend your products and services. Typically, the reason for any sales opportunity not being maximized is that the questions were either missing or inappropriate.
Understanding that people make buying decisions based on emotion and not logic, it is paramount that you get your prospect to share emotion during your questioning. A tried and tested approach to nearly every sales opportunity is to follow this simple three‐stage questioning technique.
This technique works by establishing your prospect's plans, elaborating on the success of achieving these plans, and then visualizing the pain of failure. I often describe it as painting a picture of Utopia for them, checking their feelings, and then finding their pain and aggravating it a little. The good news is that once you have prodded the bruise enough, your presentation should be the best ointment for that bruise, and if you get these processes right you will win more business.
Great questions allow you to stop selling and start recommending.
The main function of a salesperson is to encourage customers to purchase goods or services. I often refer to salespeople as professional “mind‐maker‐uppers.” If you are looking to help your prospects reach decisions, then you really should take a look at your processes and ensure you are doing all you can to make buying a painless process. Consider every barrier that exists to doing business with you and look to remove it. Revisit your paperwork process, pricing structure, and onboarding process, and do all you can to simplify and take away any unnecessary effort from the consumer.
With online retailers conditioning buyers with the simplicity of “one click to buy” and forms being filled in within seconds from our computers' memories, it is your job to make the process of doing business with you as pain free and effortless as possible for your buyer. Remove the barriers and do as much of the work for them as possible. In addition, adding factors that cause you to share the risk with the customer means that you can gain their commitment with less resistance.
Examples of risk reversal include
If you are looking for more business, I encourage you to remove all obstacles from your buying process and continue to make your own luck.
If you provide a service, as opposed to a range of products, it is likely that many of your customers avoid consulting you because they don't know exactly what they want, they are unsure what they may have to pay, and they do not wish to end up confused or embarrassed. It can be greatly beneficial for service providers to think more like retailers. If you owned a shop with items that had no prices showing, a browsing customer might assume that everything in the shop was too expensive, and you would run the risk that they would not ask for assistance for fear of embarrassment.
Imagine yourself again as a retailer. Your aim is to encourage people to go into your store and increase footfall. Service‐based industries have the same goal and can use three simple techniques to help customers do business with them more easily.
Examples include
These uncomplicated single‐price offers allow people to decide whether they can afford you, provide benchmarks for variations, and give the buyer confidence to engage in conversation with you without fear of embarrassment.
When putting your bundle together, consider all that you can include—not only the tangible services or products, but also those that add value, such as customer care, service expectation, and telephone and e‐mail support, all of which add substance.
Examples include
Typically, if you can turn a large pay‐in‐arrears product or service into a sustainable pay‐monthly option, the results are increased profit, improved cash flow, and maximum customer retention. If you are not offering your clients a packaged pay‐monthly service, you may well be missing out on a massive opportunity.
Examples include
Try packaging up your services and offering a monthly payment plan to win new customers and develop a steady stream of recurring revenue.
If you are familiar with my previous work Exactly What to Say, you will already be aware of the importance of using the right words at the right time in order to achieve the right results. Yes, words do matter, and just as the correct words help your sales success, there are many words that have the exact opposite effect.
The worst time to think about the things you say is in the moment you are saying them. I highly encourage you to learn more about the power of your words. Quite often the difference between somebody choosing you, choosing somebody like you, or choosing to do absolutely nothing is down to you knowing exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to make it count.
With that in mind, it's probably important that we try to make more of our conversations count. Instead of telling you what to say, let's look at some of the common mistakes people make that negatively affect their sales success.
Let's explore the impact of just seven independent word choices that make their way into your daily conversations. If you can remove them, replace them, or change them, or at least understand what they are doing, then you can control more of your outcomes.
The first word is a simple two‐letter word that can help people decide whether they are in your camp or out of it, whether they believe you or not, whether they are thinking that it is something for them or not for them.
The two‐letter word in question is “if.” As children, we learned to speak first by understanding objects. We then saw those objects as pictures, and we associated each picture with a sound, a spoken word. The word that sound made allowed somebody to know that we wanted the object. Once we understood the sound, the next thing we understood was the word, and eventually we could write that word.
As adults, we do things in the complete opposite way. We see a word on paper or hear a word in conversation, and the next thing we do is associate that word with the image it recalls in our memory. Pictures are what drive decisions. Everything that anybody decides to do, they are deciding to do for at least the second time, because first they decided to do it in their mind before they ever took action.
The word “if” creates a choice. “If” creates a question, and when faced with a question, people decide which side of that question they land on. So what you are doing when you use the word “if” in your sales conversations is creating a condition. People see the picture of the condition you have presented and decide instantly what side of that condition they fall on.
Here is an example. Say you said to someone “If you knock that glass over, the wine may stain the carpet.” They make an instant decision based on how likely they are to be clumsy and either accept or decline your information. You have a 50/50 chance of any advice you offer being taken.
Swapping the word “if” with the word “when” creates a completely different reaction and results in the other person being only able to see the stain in their mind. They are far more likely to act on the advice you share.
The lesson in this example is even bigger than the obvious. Instead of talking in terms of “if,” which is future and conditional, when you move your conversations to “when,” you move them to the present and make them active, hence massively increasing your chance of success.
The second word for your consideration is one that is overused and tremendously damaging to many a conversation—including the conversations you have with yourself and your teams. The word is “but.” Think of the times you have heard this word in conversation. Perhaps you received some feedback delivering praise and recognition before it was followed up with a “but.” The only part you remember clearly is everything that followed the “but.” The word almost negates anything that was said prior to it and is associated with nothing but bad news. Please don't think you can change the word to “however”; this achieves nothing other than using more syllables.
Swap the word “but” for the word “and,” resulting in all of the information now holding true.
Example:
“We would love to work with you and can see how it would benefit you, but we really need to talk about the pricing.”
“We would love to work with you and can see how it would benefit you, and now just need to talk about the pricing.”
These two examples say almost exactly the same thing. It is just that the first has a sprinkling of confrontation and the second has an abundance of collaboration.
Swap “buts” for “ands” to see your conversations become more inclusive and gain you more of what you want.
This third word has the ability to make me squirm and should be banned from every single commercial conversation on earth. Many four‐letter “C” words are inappropriate in public, and this one causes the most damage. How do you feel about the costs in your life? Are they good things or bad things? Almost always, the costs in your life are things that you see as bad things. The second you label the value you are looking to bring to a customer with a cost, you instantly destroy that value you have been building and associate your offering with a description that means money out for little in return.
My guess is that if you are asking to be paid for your goods or services, then you are planning to bring your customer something in return for that payment. Perhaps they receive a time saving, a financial benefit, or even just a valuable experience—whatever these returns are, they change the label you can attach to your offering. If you are offering something in return for payment, then you have the option to label it as an investment. Typically, people are far prouder of their investments than their costs. My advice to you is to change your language from “cost” to “investment” when speaking with your customers. When you change what you call it, you change how people perceive it.
Just another two‐letter word, massively overused when explaining how you work, the time you have been doing it, and your unique attributes that have you positioned as the number one choice. It appears in sales literature, on websites, and in spoken word. The word is we, and its extensive overuse results in you literally “we”‐ing all over your customers.
When you talk from a position of “we,” then the primary beneficiary of the information and the attachment to the receipt of the outcome stays with the person who is communicating. The word “we” talks in terms of your interests and not your customer's or prospect's and is unlikely to inspire them to action. Shift the positioning around as often as you can. When you see or hear the word “we,” change it to the word “you.”
When you say things like “What we provide is a comprehensive training program with a three‐year guarantee, service plan, and extensive warranties,” this keeps you in possession of the thing you are looking for them to purchase. Swap the beneficiary and activate the sentence. Instead of “What we provide,” move it toward “Choosing us means you benefit from….”
It should never be about what “we” have on offer when the recipient is expected to be “you.” Place your customer in possession of your goods or services with words, and then when you invite them to accept your offer, they are far more likely to move forward.
This is less likely to be a word you use yourself, yet it is potentially something your client could use to describe you or your service, so it needs to be realigned promptly to prevent unnecessary damage. If a customer or prospect labels you as “expensive,” it will be almost impossible to get them to see your product or service as something for them to purchase.
The term itself can only exist in relation to something else and needs comparisons. Its use means that your buyer already has existing judgments about the price you are asking, and the label they have applied is anchored on some other existing data. Think to yourself, “is a Rolls Royce expensive?” You may well think yes, and compared to most of the Ford model range, it absolutely would be. Yet when compared to a Bugatti, the said Rolls‐Royce is actually kind of inexpensive. Instead of calling something expensive, let's just shift it, change the word, call it something different. To the person who's labeled our thing as expensive, we talk about it as a premium option.
Buying the “expensive” option can have you feeling like you received a bad deal. Choosing the “premium” option feels luxurious and informed.
The next word is on the other side of that fence: cheap. If someone describes something as cheap and something else, the word that follows “cheap” is certainly not something you'd like to be associated with yourself, your company, your products, or your services. So let's ban the word cheap, too. We may well have in our product portfolios things that are less expensive than those premium options, but this does not mean that they are cheap. I expect they're still great at what they do, and in fact, what they do is deliver great value.
Take your lead from some of the major supermarket chains, some of the biggest brands out there, and swap “cheap” for the word “value” or perhaps even “essential.” Allow the buyer to be prouder of their entry‐level purchase.
Talking about the “problems” you see with others will win you about as many friends as telling someone they have an ugly baby.
By labeling somebody else's circumstances this way, you can create a defensive feeling in the buyer, and the result can be catastrophic. The reality is likely to be that they had some strong involvement in creating the very thing you are labeling as a “problem” and their sense of responsibility encourages them to stand by it.
Challenges can be overcome. They are obstacles that you can move out of the way, step over, side step, move around…whatever it is you might do, but problems are going to cause arguments. Challenges can be resolved and achieve positive results from forward thinking instead of blaming and negatively labeling.
For each of these words, the primary shift is to move conversations away from a focus on you selling the product or service and toward your buyer owning the item or outcome.
| Instead of this: | Say this instead: |
| If | When |
| But | And |
| Cost | Investment |
| We | You |
| Expensive | Premium |
| Cheap | Value |
| Problem | Challenge |
| When I sell | When you own |
Often referred to as the pitch, the presentation part of the sales process is the piecing question—the part where we wrap up the decision that we're looking for the other person to make in as neat a package as possible and then ask them to make that big decision.
Many aren't comfortable with the word pitch. To me, it grates a little. We're all professional at what we do, so what we're doing is presenting the outcome we're looking for, not pitching it.
Before I explain what should go into a presentation that gets you the results you're looking for, it is important to understand where we should be positioning this within our sales process. A sales presentation should largely be one‐way traffic. You should already know that your outcome is right for the customer: you would have prepared to understand the prospect, built rapport and trust, and asked some questions. This qualifies that what you're about to present to them is going to fit their needs and be a fitting solution to their challenge, so they can end up saying the words “Thank you” to you at the end of your presentation.
Having got all of that work out the way, you should be pretty confident about the fact that your presentation is going to lead toward a “Yes!” It means you're in complete control and can deliver a sales presentation purely as one‐way traffic, with little to no interruptions, that allows you to get through all of the information, transferring enthusiasm and building momentum toward your close.
You are looking for people to make a decision and commit to moving forward. Enthusiasm itself is a catalyst to a decision, so if you're looking for people to be decisive and feel excited about it, you've got to be excited about it too. Be enthusiastic in your delivery of the solution.
The presentation is largely you—not a slide deck or a beautiful brochure or a product sample. You are the presentation. Those tools can support your presentation, but they should not lead it. Every great sales presentation, whether it's a 60‐second elevator pitch, the closing remarks of a half‐day tender, or the summary of a face‐to‐face meeting, should follow a structure that's delivered on purpose.
Before leading into a presentation, decide what you want people to do as a result of listening to what you have to say. Are you looking for them to say yes and sign a contract? Are you looking for them to hand over a check or cash or give you their card details? Are you simply looking to get into the next stage in the process, or are you looking for some further information? Until you know the answer to that question, you cannot build a winning sales presentation.
There are three stages that need to go into making a show‐stopper presentation.
This set‐up has two key components:
By delivering an agenda on that basis, you gain permission to control the discussion and follow the tracks laid down. By telling people there's going to be a decision asked for at the end, you have warned them. It also means that you have obligated yourself to ask for the decision at the end of the presentation by seeking it at the start.
The middle is important because this is where you are required to provide people with enough information to make a buying decision. There are three key components that need to go in the middle of every presentation:
Be careful, when sharing your awesomeness, that you are not dismissive of other clients. Don't just drop the name of your biggest and best clients if you're speaking to somebody who's far smaller than those people, because they may well be thinking, “Well, if you work with big companies like that, you're too big for me. I don't want to be your worst customer.” Developing a “from” and “to” could help you in that statement. In my business, I work with hundreds of independent home‐based business owners right through to Fortune 500 companies. This brings confidence to people of all levels that we are a good fit for them.
Credibility can also be built with inclusive statements made in the third person. Sometimes it is difficult to blow your own trumpet, and shifting your testimonials and client feedback into third person allows you to deliver a more humble brag.
Examples:
By including third‐party endorsements in your history and credibility statement, you add value and substance, and they can be delivered effortlessly without making you sound arrogant.
At this point you should also be proudly addressing the price of your offering and not saving it until the very end. The price is perfectly positioned following your explanation of the entire package, and your lead‐in to the price could be as simple as “You receive all of that for a fixed investment of just (insert price).”
There'll be parts of the middle where the prospect stops listening, and you might think “But why would somebody stop listening to me in the middle of the most important part of my presentation?” You might even be thinking it's because they're not interested. The reality of it is it's probably quite the opposite. They've gone off to a happy place and have started to think about the implications or how to implement the ideas that you're looking for them to employ. Because they've stopped listening, when you come back around to capture their attention, they'll wonder what they've missed and won't feel like they have all the information they need. Therefore, they can't be asked for a decision yet, which is why you need a strong ending.
Give them a summary. All that the summary consists of is outlining what you've told them. Recap the fact that you've shared your history and your credibility, you've shared the range of products and services that you offer, and you've talked to them in detail about the one thing that's right for them and why you think that's the case. Mentally they'll start to tick those things off and discover they've received all the information they need. Because they then believe they have all the information they need to make a buying decision, you can do what you said you were going to do in the beginning and ask them for that decision. Then close by leading them toward the outcome that you predetermined at the start, and invite them to take the next step.
It is likely you will be required to give variations of this presentation on countless occasions in your lifetime. Your words matter, and at this point of interaction they matter more than ever. Write your sales presentation out word for word, consider the components as independent building blocks, and continue to grow in confidence and competence as your sales presentation evolves in each and every exchange.
So much pressure can be put on the seller to “close the sale.” This pressure is largely unnecessary if you have followed the principles that I've shared so far in this book. A close is simply an invitation to the buyer to take an action that confirms their decision. Given the context that has bought you to this point in conversation, asking for a decision seems more than fair. You are best to detach yourself from the success of the decision itself. Know that your responsibility is to help the buyer conclude their action with a decisive response and to facilitate that decision‐making process. Let go of the thought that you are manipulating or demanding a positive decision, and instead see yourself as guiding the outcome toward what you feel is the right solution for all parties. Buyers are typically looking to be led, and the close is your demonstration of leadership that results in everyone achieving what they came for. To help you navigate this part of the conversation, next are five widely used techniques that allow you to control the end of a discussion and lead toward the finish line.
Throughout all we have shared so far, you have been exposed to a very consultative sales process. A big reason many people become scared of asking for the business is fear of rejection. Adding an assumptive close to your consultative process is the one technique that is completely rejection free.
Knowing that your buyer is probably looking to you for guidance, you can make a series of statements and follow those statements with a question. If the buyer then answers that question, it means they are happy with the statements you've laid out.
Taking this out of context, imagine a social telephone conversation that plays out like this:
“We have been looking to find a date in our schedules that works best for our next night out and realized that Thursday the twenty‐third looks best. I was thinking we would eat first at the Chinese place on the hill at around seven p.m. and then head to the new cocktail bar downtown for nine‐ish. To get to the restaurant, will you be driving or taking a taxi?”
This is a series of statements that then results in the recipient answering with either option and agreeing to the rest of the agenda. The only other options are to suggest an alternative or ask a question. Every way around, it is a fast and effective way of confirming a decision.
It takes confidence and posture to deliver this effectively. To help your confidence in delivery, consider the work invested to get to this point. No doubt your prospect is very interested and has nodded and smiled all through your presentation. I promise at this point you have earned the right to be assumptive.
A simple business example would be as follows:
“We will make a start on your project straight away and expect to have it completed no later than the middle of next month. Inclusive of everything we have discussed today, your investment is just $450, and to get things started I have a simple one‐page form to complete that starts with your name and address. What is the best address for you?”
The second they answer the question, they have agreed to the prior statements and have, therefore, confirmed the order. The only action your customer can take, as an alternative, is to ask you a question. If they do, simply answer the question and then reiterate your simple closing question.
I am sure in the past you have been asked by a customer to move from your standard pricing, terms and conditions, or timelines. Whenever a customer asks you to alter your standard terms, before considering your move you should regain control with a conditional close. A conditional close is based on the structure “If I can…, will you…?”
Examples include:
Shifting the control back in this way means that you only have to give something away in return for an action from them. It can help bring scenarios to decision quickly, and it allows you to find out if your prospect actually has the intent to transact at all or is simply shopping around.
Earlier in the book you learned about how the alternative close can be used to secure appointments more easily by giving a choice of two dates and then asking, “Which one suits you best?”
The exact same principle of delivering the customer a perception of choice by offering multiple variations of a “yes”‐based answer can allow for decision making to be accelerated. Pick details from the entire transaction and use the choice of these details to help gain clarity over the entire decision.
Examples include:
Limiting the choices and ensuring you stay in control is what steers the decision making promptly. Give stark contrasts and avoid ambiguity. Taking the first example, had I asked, “What color would you like?” the customer could have then spent an eternity discussing the plethora of choices and prolonged the decision with too many choices to make.
I am sure that you have had times in your career when you have had dealings with people you just couldn't get a decision from. Perhaps they have asked you to revise your proposals time and time again and have been in your “maybe” pile for what seems like an eternity. I refer to these people as “faffers,” and it is our job to bring these people to a decision quickly and efficiently. Your time is precious, and in these scenarios the direct approach is really the best option. I would only ever use this approach if I were comfortable in receiving a “no” response from the prospect.
This means presenting the buyer with a “yes” or “no” option with phrases like “Are you going to place an order? Yes or no?” Your confidence in this process triggers a decision, and either way you can move forward. This can often result in a positive decision, since the fear of you taking the offer away can regularly trigger a buying decision.
Big decisions are hard to make. Small ones can be easier. Breaking the decision down by presenting your buyer with a series of small questions that help them find confidence over their decision is a wonderful second attempt if they remain indecisive.
Your goal is to build a rhythm of questions that all lead toward yes‐based answers. The rhythm of the buyer confirming “yes” to each component results in the yes option being the only option for the whole thing. Start with guaranteed yeses and build to the more specific decisions as you go.
An example for an accountant could be:
Gaining a positive response to each component answer builds confidence in all parties and allows you to move to the precise next action required to get started.
This slowed‐down and component‐led approach also allows you to locate a smaller stumbling block that you may be able to work around once it's isolated.
There are many factors that trigger people into making buying decisions. Adding these elements to your presentations, recommendations, and closes can provide the special edge that is an additional catalyst for the decision: