Managers often say they need help teaching their salespeople to close–they just aren’t converting prospects to customers.  As many of our Executive MBA participants pointed out in last month’s session, closing often isn’t the problem. 
 
Professional selling is a series of steps and many models, such as the one below, indicate that “closing” is a very late step in the sales process.  More often the problem isn’t with closing–it lies in one of the two earlier steps: Prospecting or Face-to-Face meetings.
 
If the problem is prospecting, then your salespeople aren’t seeing the right people.  No matter how good they are in front of a prospect, if it is the wrong person or company, their sales totals will be poor.  Face-to-Face problems typically mean your salespeople have poor questioning techniques or poor presentation skills.  If your salespeople get a lot of price objections and their sales are low, Face-to-Face could indeed be the source of the problem.  That combinations of symptoms typically means they are not building sufficient benefits in the customer’s estimation to offset your price.

The Sales Process

Kirk Smith, PhD 
Associate Dean, Executive MBA Program
April 2009