4 Things You Must Do Before Asking For The Sale
During rapport building, you become your prospect’s friend.
During qualifying and pitching, you start to act more as a trusted professional.
But when it comes to asking for the sale, you clearly become a salesperson.
And the mood on the call will change.
Once you ask for the sale, you are passing a point of no return—entering into the land of objection handling and negotiation, and departing from the land of qualifying and showing value.
Even if your prospect liked and trusted you before, they may become skeptical (even stand-offish) when you ask them to make a buying decision.
At this point, it becomes far more difficult to keep your prospect on the phone, especially if they’ve made up their mind that they don’t want to buy.
Therefore, you need to make absolutely sure that you do these 4 things BEFORE you ask for the sale:
- Show value
- Anticipate objections
- Qualify
- “Mini-close”
1. Show value
Showing value happens during your pitch.
In simplest terms, the prospect has engaged with your sales process because they have a problem that needs to be solved. This problem is sometimes referred to as a “pain point.”
The value that your product or service offers is its ability to solve or relieve the prospect’s problem or pain point.
It is the goal of your pitch to get your prospect to very high levels of logical certainty and emotional belief that your product can, in fact, deliver on the value that you say it can.
If you can’t achieve this, then #2 through #4 don’t matter.
Click here to read more about the perfect sales pitch.
2. Anticipate objections
Anticipated objections come up at various points throughout the sales process.
An “anticipated objection” is something your prospect says that sounds like a baby objection that might grow up into a full-grown adult objection by the time you ask for the sale.
We also call these “red flags.”
Here are some examples:
- “We’re not buying anything, just doing our research.”
- “I’ll need to talk to my boss before we get anything started.”
- “We’ll probably want to wait until next year.”
If ignored, these objections will come back up after you ask for the sale.
So it’s better to handle any anticipated objections BEFORE you ask for the sale …
Click here to read more about how to handle anticipated objections.
3. Qualify
If you’ve already handled all the anticipated objections …
Then there are only three possibilities when you ask for the sale:
- The prospect repeats an anticipated objection.
- The prospect gives an unanticipated objection.
- The prospect signs the deal.
#3 is obviously the ideal outcome.
And #1 isn’t so bad either, because you’ve already anticipated the objection and you’ve probably already addressed it, at least partially.
Click here to read more about handling objections.
But #2 is interesting.
Assuming you did a good job of qualifying, this might be a fake objection.
Click here to read more about “smokescreen” objections.
Click here to read more about how to tell if an objection is fake.
Or, you did a bad job of qualifying and you missed something.
Click here to read more about how to “dig in” during qualifying.
Orrrrr, the prospect is changing their answer from what they already told you during qualifying.
This is when you have to hold your prospect accountable.
For example, if your prospect gives you the “partner” objection:
“I need to talk to my partner before I can buy this.”
Then you can look back at your qualifying notes and say:
“Oh, I’m sorry! I should have invited your partner to join our call. I thought you might have said at the beginning of our call that you’re the 100% owner of the business …”
And then pause and wait for Bob to admit that this “partner” doesn’t really exist.
In other words, this is a “smokescreen” objection.
Click here to read more about “smokescreen” objections.
4. “Mini-close”
You want to avoid waiting until the very end of the sales encounter to find out if your prospect is planning to sign the deal.
In other words, you want to know if your prospect is going to buy before you ask them to buy.
First things first, at the very beginning of the sales encounter, you want to make sure your prospect knows this is a “buying” conversation, i.e., they will be expected to give an answer one way or another (yes or no) at the end of the call. If it’s a “yes,” they will be making their first payment.
One common way to do this is known as an “upfront contract.”
This is especially important if marketing sends you leads that think they are getting a “free consultation” or a “no-obligations quote.”
Click here to read more from HubSpot about the “up-front contract.”
Now, throughout the rest of the sales encounter, your prospect should be getting closer and closer to saying “yes.”
Think of it like a thermometer. Not a digital thermometer. One of those old-fashioned thermometers filled with red mercury.
Your prospect starts out cold, somewhere near the bottom of the thermometer. Throughout the sales encounter, things should heat up. And your prospect moves higher and higher.
When your prospect has a fever, that’s when they’re ready to buy. And that’s when you can ask for the sale.
Click here to read more about increasing urgency throughout the sales pitch.
But how can you take your prospect’s temperature? In other words, how do you know when your prospect is ready to buy?
We recommend a strategy called “mini-closing.”
This involves asking smaller, easier questions throughout the sales encounter to make sure the sales encounter is still moving in the direct of a “yes” from the prospect when you ask for the sale.
Click here to read more about “mini-closing.”
Why these 4 things must be done BEFORE asking for the sale.
It will be much more difficult to backtrack and do these things after you’ve already asked for the sale.
Your prospect will be less open-minded about seeing value (because they are now more focused on thinking of and defending their objections).
They will be more shy and protective of their qualifying info (because it’s obvious now that you are going to try and use it against them to close the sale).
And they will now use all of their objections against you (even if you anticipated them), if you don’t explicitly address them and put them to bed before asking for the sale.
But don’t wait TOO long!
Similar to our thermometer analogy from earlier, Jordan Belfort talks about a “continuum of certainty” in his book Way of the Wolf.
It’s helpful to think of your prospect as being somewhere on a scale of 1 (not certain at all) to 10 (absolutely positively certain), in terms of how certain they are about buying your product.
Throughout the sales encounter, you as the salesperson should be moving your prospect closer and closer to the 10.
You want to ask for the sale when you have your prospect as far along the “continuum of certainty” as possible.
But it’s rare to get a prospect all the way to the 10.
So at some point, you’ll have to place your bet and ask for the sale.
And if you wait too long, your prospect may become bored/impatient and begin to lose the necessary excitement/energy to say “yes” with enthusiasm when you ask for the sale.