Article Written By: Jack Q. Xavier
Selling is a tough business. Many people start a sales job with high hopes, but quickly burn out. Getting rejected isn't easy for anybody, and in sales, you have to suffer through plenty of rejection in order to get to the pot of gold on the other side. However, with a few techniques, you can increase your closing percentages, so you get less rejection, and more sales. In this article I'll be talking about various closing techniques that can help you improve your bottom line.The first technique is called the 'puppy dog' close. You can imagine why it has this name based on the following scenario. A family with a couple of kids comes into a pet store. They see a puppy. The kids ask if they can have it. The owner allows them to take it home for the weekend, to see what it's like. The kids, naturally, fall in love with it and the family buys the puppy. Any time you allow the client the free use of your product for any amount of time, you're using the puppy dog close. Test drives, thirty day free trials, and other common sales strategies are variations on this theme.Another powerful technique is called the 'take away.' This means that near the end of the sales process, after you've done a tremendous job building up the value of the product, you introduce something that makes it seem like the product is just out of reach, or is in danger of being out of reach. That will make your client really hungry for your product, and they'll sometimes do almost anything to get it. Frequently, knowing that there is a waiting list for any particular product is enough to make people want it. And if you ever wonder why the book or product you want from Amazon is always out of stock, now you know. They are using the 'take away' close.This last technique is a bit more subtle, as it's a linguistic technique borrowed from the world of conversational hypnosis. It's called a double bind. What it does is offers your client two choices, that in reality both lead the same outcome. If I ask you whether you want to sit in the red chair or the blue chair, it may seem like you have a choice, but my outcome, to get you to sit down, is realized either way. Similarly, when it comes time to ask for the order, you can construct your question like this: Do you want the six month plan, or the two year plan? Will you be paying with cash or credit? With these basic techniques, you'll find your sales can increase dramatically. You'll close a lot more sales, and your commission checks will be substantially larger.
This Article Has Been Published on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 and Read 258 Times