Do you find yourself being successful in a sense of getting opportunities all the way to the closing point but falling short on closing the deal? You have been through cold calling, going through all of the steps from a discovery call to an onsite assessment, but get to the point where proposals just sit there. Sound familiar? You are not alone.
Question: Do you have any tips to help me close more deals?
Robin: First, you need to make sure you have accurate closing rate numbers. Second thing is to make sure you are going on appointments with people who are qualified. If you skip this step, you will have low close rates. Maybe a little bit more qualification up front will increase your close rates. I am saying this because it might not just be trust or poor proposals. You might not need any tips. It could be you just got the numbers wrong and maybe you’re talking to the wrong people. At minimum, you should be closing 10%. On average, if we look at our Producers and Accelerators Club members, they are closing at 35%. All right, So, you know, you should have closed whatever. You know, What is that? Three, four, six, whatever. We also have members who close 70%, but, you know, 35% is a good goal. So, one is are the numbers real? Number two, make sure you are meeting with qualified leads. You’re just talking them into appointments and there are a couple reasons that people don’t buy.
2 Reasons You Aren’t Closing Deals
- One reason you are aren’t closing could be they’re not ready to genuinely buy – they’re in an information gathering stage. We have entire strategy for first time appointments, and one of the things you do in your first appointment is asking them to tell you about their business. You’re doing full discovery. What are you looking for? What’s the time frame you’re looking at? You cover a little bit of budget. You kind of throw a number out there to see if they’re in a contract, because then you wouldn’t want to go through the assessment, stuff like that. Tell them you will call at the beginning of June and you’ll do an assessment. If you did it now, even if you gave a quote right now, prices change. Situations change. So, it could be there just in the information gathering stage and they’re not ready.
- The second reason could be something happened in the business all of a sudden that their intention to buy and move forward got canceled. Like that’s what happened in COVID. I can’t tell you how many members came to me and said, oh shit, I had 20 deals out there that were supposed to close. So, you know, statements of work should have been going. And then just like, boom, like that, everybody said, Nope, not doing it right. So, it could be something that happened, right? It could be that they didn’t trust you, the services you proposed were more expensive than they though they would be, or they didn’t like the approach, or could be they didn’t like your recommendations, then they decided to kind of stay where they are.
Your job is to figure out who is a good fit. We had a member (this is the shortest turnaround of a member in our history) the guy buys in the morning and that afternoon he emailed us and said, oh my God, I looked around the dashboard. This looks like a lot of work. It is like we sold him a gym membership and he opened the gym door and he saw a bunch of people working out and sweating and he closed the gym door and said, nope, not for me. I can’t sell that guy because that’s what it is. Work, right? I can’t hide that and dress that up. If he’s not willing to spend the money or the time on it, then we are really not a right fit for each other. I hear, I can’t implement it because I don’t have a list – but that’s a mindset. People who just want a lifestyle business, we’re really not a right fit for them because I’m going to wear them out. You can’t close them all. I think it’s a matter of now what do you do? I recommend the nine-word email. What I am saying is, it could be you don’t need tips to close more deals, you just need to qualify better and build trust. Read our latest blog about how to build trust here.
That doesn’t mean you’re going to have 100% close rate. I don’t know of anybody who has 100% close rate. I don’t think 100% close rate is a goal that you want to achieve anyway, maybe 100% on the absolute perfect right fit. That’s the deal. You’re not going to get 100% perfect fit leads all the time.
Take a step back and really think about who you want as a client. Look at your best client and then go out and find more of just like them. That will help qualify appointments and get to a 100% perfect right fit goal.
