Closing on The Presentation

Today, I want to talk about closing on the presentation. Not closing the presentation, but closing on the presentation.

Let me set up the scenario: you've made a cold call, you have the decision maker on the line and you've piqued their interest by telling them about your company. You've asked great questions to qualify them and you know that this is the right company. Now the question is, how do you close on the presentation? How can you get very busy people to commit to a meeting with you. (These are for big/ complex sales you can't close over the phone)

1) You can say, "Mr. Customer, is there any way we can spend the next 10 - 20 minutes going through the product and platform we have and I'll show you how we can reduce your cost by 20% within the next 90 days. Can we do that right now?" That's called closing the presentation right there and then.

2) The other option may be, the decision maker could say, "Now's not a good time." You can respond with understanding and suggest an alternate time. Now again, I'm trying to close for the presentation, but I'm trying to close later on during the day. Sometimes it's best to give them 2-time frames or a range of time ("I'm available anytime between three and five, what works best for you?")

3) Maybe the decision maker doesn't want to do it today, they want to do it at another date. Now, this is trickier, but same idea; you want to give them an option. You're going to suggest a closed date that's a little further out. For example, let's say that today's Monday, I'm going to say something like this, "Great, I can do one tomorrow, Tuesday, or would Thursday be better?

Now here's what's interesting from a psychological standpoint, people will always, nine times out of ten, choose, which one do you thing? The Tuesday or the Thursday? If you said Thursday, you're absolutely correct. The majority of people, 9/10 times will choose a date that's furthest out. That's just human nature, right? The further out the less of a commitment it seems like, but if it's the next day, it seems like a lot of commitment to do that quickly.

After you've locked down a day, suggest a specific time to meet. My personal favorite is 2 PM because most people go to lunch around noon. When they come back to the office and they have to kind of catch up on little things here and there, and then by two o'clock, I assume that they're going to be free to have a meeting. Setting a meeting at 10 AM is another reliable time for the same reason. Most people get into the office at 8:30/9, they've cleared off their desk a little bit, enough to feel comfortable to give me a meeting.

Now, if the customer says, "Well, why don't you just get back to me, next Tuesday?" That is not closing on the presentation. Now, there's a fundamental difference between advancing the sale and continuing the sale.

What's the difference? Continuing is bad, advancing is good. Continuing the sale means, "Yeah, get back to me next Tuesday and we'll talk about it."

Or, they'll say this, "Let me think about it and I'll get back to you Victor."

Or another option is, "let me talk to my team first, and then we'll set up a time."

All three examples are examples of continuation because I didn't get a commitment.

See an advancement is a commitment. It is a central step towards moving forward. In other words, by getting them to agree to a date and a time, I have now moved the sale forward to the next step. In other words, I am going through the sales process and I've taken the next step.

You might hope that they're going to get back to you, but they will not; at the end of the day, people will forget 75% of what they heard. In other words, you're probably forgotten about you as soon as you hang up the phone.

What I like to do, is I like to follow up. Once I have a commitment, a time and a date, I want to follow up with a message on their phone number or email (preferably both). Try to do it within the next 5 or 10 minutes after you hang up the phone. It's a way of confirming that you have an agreement to meet on this day.

Getting that commitment means all the difference in making progress towards that close.

Everything you learned in this article is part of a sales process. Make a robust and profitable sales process from presentation close to the close of the sale at Sales Mastery Intensive on August 19th.

Victor Antonio has a B.S. Electrical Engineering, an MBA and built a 20-year career as a top sales executive, then President of Global Sales and Marketing for a $420M company before becoming a sales trainer, author, and keynote speaker. He has shared the stage with top business speakers: Rudy Giuliani, Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel), and John May (CEO of FedEx Kinkos). He's the author of 12 books on sales and motivation and 200+ sales training videos. More info at www.VictorAntonio.com