This Is Why You Keep Failing To Seal The Deal
Any business person needs to be able to seal deals. Being unable to seal the deal during a pitch or meeting will mean losing a potential project and client, which will ultimately cost you a lot of money. If you aren’t selling yourself and your company well enough in your pitch, then the people who you are trying to sell to simply won’t be interested, and they could be won over by your clients.
Of course, sealing a deal is more than just making your company sound good in your pitch. Creating a fantastic pitch can actually be a lot of hard work, and getting it just right can be very difficult.
Especially as there are so many common errors and mistakes that many business owners make when trying to score a new client. If you are failing to seal any deals at the minute, you could be making one of those critical errors.
If You Aren’t Interested In The Client Don’t Expect To Seal The Deal
Even though you do need to sell your company well in your pitch, it shouldn’t be all about you. One of the keys to a good pitch is that it involves the client or individual who you are trying to sell to.
Give them a chance to explain why they are thinking of using your company, and then you can bounce off this and explain what the many advantages of them hiring you would be. If you continually talk about yourself and don’t give the other person a chance to air their views and feelings, then you might find they don’t want to sign a contract with you at the end.
This is a common occurrence for salespeople who are struggling. Basically, they come from a mindset of how can I sell this person, rather than how can I help this person.
When you are focused on making your offer sound amazing and trying to push it on your prospect, rather than finding out their needs and wants first, you push people away.
You need to ask more probing questions up front to further understand what your prospects needs, wants, and pain points are, and then structure your invite to their needs.
You’re Obviously Uncomfortable Selling
We aren’t all natural salespeople. Some individuals will enjoy pitching and will come across as very confident and charismatic. Unfortunately, though, those of us who don’t particularly enjoy selling and pitching could come across as the complete opposite.
If you are very nervous then there will be a bigger chance of you fluffing some of your lines in the pitch, and this won’t give a very good impression to whoever you are trying to sell to.
So, if you know that you aren’t that great at giving a pitch, whether one-on-one or in a meeting, it’s worth handing this responsibility over to someone who is better at it and will find it easier to impress prospective clients.
Certainly improving your sales skills is the foundation of becoming more comfortable selling, but in addition to that finding out if someone is open to your offer first makes things more natural.
As you are asking questions of your potential customer you should start to learn about various pain points that your prospect has. From here it can become a natural transition to your offer by simply asking them if they are open to solving their problem with your help.
For example, it may sound something like, “Hey Bob, I couldn’t help but overhear you are struggling with _____. It may or may not be for you but I’m just curious if I could show you a way to get over ____, would you be open to checking it out?”
This simple step of finding out if they are open first makes it so much easier to transition into your sales pitch or to simply set up an appointment for the next step.
You Don’t Let Software Do The Hard Work For You
Giving a pitch isn’t all that is involved with trying to seal a deal with a new client. There’s a lot of smaller, more admin-based tasks, that need to be carried out as well, such as sending out follow-up emails and storing contact details for potential leads.
If you are spending more time on these small tasks than working on your pitch, you probably won’t be putting enough time to improve your sales technique.
Don’t panic, though, as sales automation CRM is the answer. Using this kind of software will automate all of the smaller tasks that are associated with your sales and trying to find new clients. And then you’ll have a lot more time for more important things!
Set Up Way To Pre-Qualify Your Potential Customers To Assist In Sealing The Deal
Another great way to seal the deal more effectively is to pre-qualify your prospects in advance. Most people who are just getting started, make the mistake of marketing to everyone.
It may sound like a good idea to pitch your offer to everything that moves, but in reality, it ends up wasting a lot of your time. Instead of trying to convince everyone that they need your product or service, spend your time up front qualifying those who are actually interested and open to your offer first.
Most people struggle to seal the deal in their business because they are spending too much time with the wrong people. There are a few ways to help pre-qualify your potential customers before they set up an appointment with you.
One is to generate your own leads, which I’ll cover more in a bit, but having someone opt-in to a free offer first can start the process of prequalifying a lead.
A second option is to have your potential customers fill out a survey before you schedule a time to talk with them. This can help you pre-sort the people who fill out a survey to see if they are even someone you can help with your offer.
Another option to pre-qualify your leads is to offer a small product for sale, or a trial offer, for a low price, and then follow up with those who bought. It might not seem like a lot but there is a big difference between someone willing to invest vs someone who isn’t. Even if the trial offer is something small even as low as a dollar.
Start Generating Your Own Sales Leads
One of the best ways to seal the deal with more potential customers is to start generating your own leads. Again this is different than actively prospecting for potential customers.
When you generate a lead on your own it means that you gave away some kind of lead magnet that your target market was actually interested in. Typically your lead magnet should focus on answering a common question of your ideal customer, or help them get results faster, or avoid a problem they routinely deal with.
For example, if you sold weight loss products, you may have a lead magnet offer of something like, “10 exercises to lose 10 pounds in 30 days.” When someone downloads your guide to weight loss they certainly are a great candidate to buy your weight loss products. In this scenario you know they have a problem you can solve with your offer.
Qualifying leads in this manner can really help you increase the conversion rate in your sales process and ensure you seal the deal! If you’d like to learn the simple process to generate more leads for your business, check out my free Lead Generation Boot Camp below!
You Don’t Make Things Personal
There’s no point walking into a meeting and delivering the exact same pitch that you have delivered word-for-word a few times before to different clients. It will be far too generic and won’t address their individual needs.
Ideally, it is best to write up a bespoke pitch for every client that you see and have a meeting with. This gives you the chance to address their own concerns and worries, and they will have all of their questions answered during your pitch which can be very impressive for them indeed.
To help you form the perfect pitch for a client, be sure to carry out plenty of research into their company in advance. Again this comes back to asking your potential customer plenty of questions up front and doing your research.
When you know what your potential customer needs and wants, it’s your job to show them how your business can provide that. People care about what’s in it for them and the benefits, not the cool features of your products.
You Forget To Follow Up
Did you know that most deals are sealed during the follow-up communication? That is why it is essential that you always follow up after a pitch, either by a quick phone call or email.
If some companies are inviting a few different firms to pitch to them, they might delay on deciding who to go with. They might even forget who a few of the firms were. So, by following up with them, you can jog their mind and hopefully nudge them closer to choosing you.
The fortune is in the follow-up and make sure you have an effective follow-up strategy in place. As your lead flow increases it can be hard to remember everyone you need to follow up with or how far along someone is throughout the sales process.
Having a CRM or customer relationship manager in place can help you follow up more effectively. You can check out more information about one of the CRM’s I use and recommend here.
These are just a few of the main mistakes that some business owners make when trying to pitch for new clients. You may also want to check out my video below on How To Become Great At Sales In 9 Easy Steps Below!
Did This Blog Help You? If so, I would greatly appreciate if you could comment below and share on Facebook
Facebook: facebook.com/coachmikemacdonald
Email: [email protected]
Considering Starting a Home Business?
Check out my Work With Mike Section
“I help coachable and teachable professionals become Financially Free and Live Full Time! Helping you create a better tomorrow through a better you!”
P.S. Want to ATTRACT MORE LEADS & MAKE MORE SALES in YOUR Business? Download My FREE 37-Page E-Book Exposes The ‘Marketing Framework’ To Attract A Never-Ending Flood of BUYERS for ANY Business Fast! GET INSTANT ACCESS HERE
If you enjoyed this post on This Is Why You Keep Failing To Seal The Deal, please retweet and comment below
