Question of the Week 16: To Close or Not to Close? The Sales Quandary
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If you could only ask one question of your sales team this week to move sales forward, ask this:
Are we engaged in lose-win or win-lose opportunities?
Have you ever been willing to give a bit more than you really wanted just to close the sale?
Ever given so much of a discount to win an account that it hurt your organization more than it helped? For example: a negative profit that set a precedent and now customers always expect a low price. (A lose-win occurs when you lose while the customer wins).
Or perhaps closed a sale knowing the customer wasn’t quite happy with the solution? (A win-lose occurs when you win while the customer loses).
Justifications for these actions may seem reasonable: “I don’t have many opportunities in my funnel to close,” or “I’m just doing what I need to do to make numbers.” But many sales professionals forget to calculate the ramifications of engaging in anything but win-win sales. These opportunities have the potential to turn into a lose-lose and hurt your company’s ability to secure business in the long run.
Win-win opportunities ensure you and your customer are satisfied with the sale – which typically result in loyal customers. Playing win-win with can also increase the number of referrals for your organization.
To learn more about playing win-win, click here.
Do you have a story of a lose-win or win-lose opportunity that went wrong? Share with us today!
Michel Chiasson
January 19th, 2010 at 10:35 am
Funny enough, I just talked about this in my blog today. By the way, the closing with a discount happens at a high percentage when “the boss” is on the call to help close the sale.
Obviously, most anyone could close that way. What it does to the relationship however is often unrecoverable. Perception by the client, the process that you abandoned in order too knee jerk a purchase, will hamper future business and relationships. But my question / comment is really about – if the job is well done at the first stages of the sales cycle, there should not be a reason to have to “bring the big gun to close this deal”. Any thoughts?
Rachel Norkin
January 19th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Michel – I completely agree. If you set the stage for a Win-Win relationship from the beginning of the sales cycle and the first interaction with the client, the deal should close in the same manner. But as much as we want to play Win-Win with our clients, they often ask for discounts for a variety of reasons.
If a prospect or customer is asking for a discount, even though you’re playing Win-Win, it likely means they still don’t see the difference between you and your competition. They haven’t linked value to your solution. It is only by thoroughly understanding what each person in the buying process wants to accomplish, fix, or avoid as a result of your solution, then tying your solution to that end result.
When salespeople do an effective job of linking value to their solution, the request for discounts is greatly diminished. A customer will likely pay any reasonable price in order to solve their problems.
Thank you for keeping up with our blog and please keep the comments and questions coming.
Rachel Norkin, Product Manager