In sales we always talk about “closing the deal.” And saying this puts the emphasis on the closing meeting as the moment where we finally convince the prospect to give is that “YES.”
But I contend the closing meeting should actually be called the “confirmation” meeting. You see, if you have done everything properly before the “closing” meeting, you really should just be confirming things that have already been covered and then presenting the numbers associated with the solutions you’ve already discussed.
My contention is this, the real sale takes place starting the moment your prospect first lays eyes on you, right through to the end of your initial “Discovery” meeting. It’s in those meetings that you learn about your prospects issues, challenges and unrealized opportunities. And in those meetings, each time you found an area of need, you drilled down on it to find the emotional level pain that situation causes. It’s then that you delivered your solution and gave your prospect hope and anticipation about not having to deal with that issue any more.
And if you have done this with 5 or 6 REAL issues that your prospect would love to see resolved, you have then created anticipation in your prospects mind. You leave that meeting with your prospect thinking, “those solutions all sounded really good, I just hope I can afford it.” That’s anticipation, and anticipation is one of the strongest emotions in sales. By the time you come back to present your numbers, your prospect has been thinking about your solutions and hoping he can afford them because he knows he really needs what you’ve got. That is, he know this IF you did a good enough job in the Discovery meeting finding the issues, drilling down to the emotional roots of the challenge, then powerfully delivering the solutions that would solve the issues.
So what we call the closing meeting is really just the meeting where we convince the prospect that the solutions he already wants, are worth the fee we will charge. All this relates back to the power of the solutions you presented in that initial meeting. The more powerful they were, the easier it is to cost justify your fee. The weaker they were… well you know how that ends.
Just remember that is our job to find the issues. And it’s our job to create value around our solutions. Done properly, the closing meeting is just confirming everything and wrapping up some paperwork. Now that’s an easy close!
Onward & Upward!
Ben