Often the smallest things stop us from closing deals. Once while working as a National Sales Manager for a rather well known company I employed a man who I truly believed had all the trappings of a highly successful salesperson. Let\'s call him Ed. It is my policy to throw salespeople into the deep end when they start working with me and I made no exception for Ed.
Ed took to tele-appointing like a bird to flying. He had absolutely no problem whatsoever setting up appointments. He proceeded to attend the appointments he had set and I was sure that his first sale was not going to be long in coming. My instincts proved to be wrong. Ed attended appointment after appointment and no sale arrived. I was rather busy with other things at the time and I didn\'t get the opportunity to go out on a call with Ed. We discussed his performance in the office, went through some role-play and I re-iterated my belief that there was nothing wrong with his selling and I could see no reason why he hadn\'t closed a deal.
I liked Ed and thought he might be just having a run of bad luck (I know we are not really allowed to talk of bad luck in sales-\'you make your own luck\'). Ed continued to go on appointments and continued not to close deals. I was intrigued, Ed didnt come across as the type that was scared of closing and seemed like the ideal salesperson for the service we were selling.
I eventually decided to go on a call with Ed (admitedly I should have done it much sooner). I thought his pitch was fabulous, however there was one thing I noticed. The service we were selling involved the client signing a contract that tied them into a relationship with our employer for a number of years. The Company we worked for was highly ethical and the contract was of great benefit to any client that signed into it. However, like any contract, it was designed to protect our employer as well as the client and had a couple of clauses within the fine print that might have been off-putting to a prospect. There was nothing unusual about this. Have you ever read the contract given to you by the bank to sign when opening an account?
It was common for prospects to say that they wanted to read the contract prior to signing. Ed\'s mistake was that he was giving over the contract directly into the prospects hands. By doing this, Ed was handing over control of the meeting to the prospect. He was also increasing the chances that the prospect would read the contract in detail and notice the \'bad bits\'. After the meeting I told Ed what I thought he was doing wrong and explained that it was essential that he leave the contract on the table and merely swing it around for the prospect to see while keeping one of his hands on the contract. After all, I explained, it was in the prospects best interests to buy from us,so why let essential clauses that protect our employer bring down the sale.
Ed listened to what I said and took it onboard. It is no exaggeration to say that his selling changed overnight and he soon became the highest performing salesperson in the firm. When I asked him later what effected the massive change he said \'It was the way I gave the prospect the contract\'.
Like I say, sometimes the smallest things stop us from closing the deal.
*From the Book by M.Cohen \'Unlimited Sales\'
