3 Non-Sales Skills You Should Hone To Boost Your Closing Ratio
Every cent in your bank account exists because someone in your company convinced somebody else that your product or service was “worth it.”
What skillset are we describing today? That’s right…
Selling, to close the deal.
Of ALL the assets you could have in your wheelhouse, none is so under-appreciated as the ability to close a deal. And of ALL these assets, how great is it to know that you can increase amount of money you generate in this asset alone, simply by focusing on improving this one skillset?
We’d like to posit this idea:
That maybe this “selling, to close the deal” skill rises (or crashes) at the whims of a handful of other, unrelated, but connected skills.
We all know what a closing ratio is…
If you had 10 prospects, can you confidently say that you’d close upwards of 60% of them?
This simple ratio creates a track record – where one week, your sales could be UP and UP – versus the next week, if your sales DIP and DIP – you can note how well you’re doing, with a number.
But we don’t have numbers for:
“Sticking To The point.”
“Not Getting Distracted”
“Managing Your Feelings.”
“Listening. Just Listening.”
We’d like to help you find out the answer to this, with 3 simple skillsets you can improve on, for a greater sales-ability.
1. The Ability To Stay Authentic
“Why?”
This is the hardest question we can be asked, in pretty much any situation.
“Why this product?”
“Why your company?”
“Why you?”
“Why now?”
Preparing, you could technically write your script, noting each question as an objection, and give a canned response… no problem. But the question “why you” asks something deeper. In fact, it questions your belief in what it is you’re selling. And this is where most sales-processes get it wrong.
- They can motivate WHAT they’re selling.
- And maybe, HOW they do it differently.
- But rarely, or never, can they explain WHY you (Mr. or Ms. Customer) should act today.
Simon Sinek, the author of “Start With Why” and so much more, posits that once you get your beliefs in alignment with your actions, you work from a much more authentic position, because what you believe in, personally, reflects in the world, publicly.
We believe that if you can do the deep work, i.e., learn WHY you believe in what you’re selling, you can work from a firm base of authenticity and therefore, develop fluency in the answers you give to any objection…
2. The Ability To Manage Rejection (Your Emotions)
Anyone who has worked in sales will tell you the same thing. If you’re not a psychopath, you will have an emotional investment in each conversation. Losing this investment to rejection sucks! After all, we’re social animals.
Being rejected takes us right back to that feeling when the tribe would cast us out into the wild, alone, for eating more than our fair share of berries. And back then, not having a tribe, meant literal death.
Which is why, when we start, we may have a visceral fear that for all our efforts, we will eventually be rejected.
It’s been seen time, and time again, that if you don’t handle this fear properly, it will affect your self-esteem (how you see and accept yourself) affecting your sales-ability, and on and on it goes…
You can see how this can spiral downward, very quickly.
To work in sales and improve your results, learn to handle rejection and the feeling it creates in your mind – and remember, if they do reject your service/product offering, they’re not rejecting YOU as a person.
3. Listening, The Skill That Will Change Your Life
Have you ever been in a conversation with a person and thought:
“Wow, I really should be listening…”
Listening is less about hearing the words, than it is about staying present.
And staying present to give someone your full focus is not easy. If this was a major focus worldwide, perhaps we’d all feel more heard and less frustrated.
Companies would invest more into understanding their customers, with excellent communication methods, and their customers would feel grateful, just to be heard.
Practice really listening, not just to what your prospect is saying, but also what they’re not saying, because this space will say incredible volumes about what they know and don’t know – and how you can help.
These are not the expected skills you’d think you’d need, to be a great salesperson. It’s normal to think that being pushier or more confident might help results improve– but we believe that a solid base of belief, emotions-management and listening will help you last years longer in the sales-game.
Good luck!