Brian Tracy - The art of closing the sale: the key to making more money faster in the world of professional selling

To my friend and business partner,
Victor Risling, the best salesman
and greatest closer Ive ever seen.

2007 by Brian Tracy

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tracy, Brian.
The art of closing the sale : the key to making more money faster in the world of professional selling / Brian Tracy.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-7852-1429-8 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-7852-8913-5 (IE)
1. Selling. I. Title.
HF5438.25.T7117 2007
658.85--dc22

2006034507

Printed in the United States of America
09 10 11 12 13 QW 9 8 7 6 5 4

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
BREAKING THE SUCCESS
BARRIER IN SALES

WHEN I BEGAN SELLING, COLD-CALLING FROM OFFICE to office during the day, and from house to apartment during the evening, I was terrified of closing.

Every day, I would sally forth to sell, unafraid to get face-to-face with prospects and enthusiastically deliver my sales information. Then, at the end, I would choke up and ask hesitatingly, What do you want to do now?

Invariably, the prospect would say, Well, leave it with me and let me think about it.

I learned later that the words, Let me think it over or Let me think about it are polite customer-speak for Goodbye forever; well never meet again.

I convinced myself that people all over town were thinking it over and that my phone would soon fall off the hook with eager buyers. But no one ever called.

I finally realized that it was not the product, the price, the market, or the competition that was holding me back from making sales. It was me. More specifically, it was my fear of asking a closing question.

One day, I decided that I had had enough of frustration and failure. My very next call, when the prospect said, Let me think about it; why dont you call me back, I said something that changed my life.

I replied, my heart in my throat, Im sorry, I dont make callbacks.

Excuse me, he said, a bit surprised. You dont make callbacks?

No, I said. You know everything you need to know to make a decision right now. Why dont you just take it?

He looked at me, then down at my brochure, and then looked up and said, Well, if you dont make callbacks, I might as well take it.

He got out his checkbook, signed the order, paid me, and thanked me for coming. I walked out with the order in a mild state of shock. I had just experienced a major breakthrough.

I went next door, made my presentation to the decision-maker, and used the same words when he asked for time to think it over: I dont make callbacks.

He said, All right, then Ill take it now.

After my third sale in less than forty-five minutes, compared with my normal rate of three sales per week, I was walking on air! Within one month, I had broken every sales record for my company, been promoted to sales manager, and increased my income twenty times. I had thirty-two salespeople under me, all of whom I trained to ask for the order at the first meeting. Business boomed!

Over the years I have learned that knowledge of the key closing skills is essential to your making the kind of money you are truly capable of.

I have studied, practiced, and used countless sales-closing techniques, all included in this book, and trained more than 1,000,000 salespeople to be sales stars.

The biggest single obstacle to great success in selling is your ability to get a prospect to take action. The purpose of this book is to show you how to remove this obstacle so that you can make all the sales and all the money you want.

All top salespeople are good at closing. They know how to prospect professionally, identify needs, build trust, answer objections, and ask for the order in several different ways. They understand why prospects hesitate and delay, and they know how to structure their offerings to overcome these obstacles. As a result, they join the top 20 percent of salespeople who make all the money.

When I started out in selling, I got no training at all. I was given some brochures to read and told to go out and talk to people. I was nervous about cold-calling and afraid of rejection, of which I got a lot. I trudged from office to office and from door to door, barely making enough to get by.

The Great Question

Then one day, I began asking, Why is it that some salespeople are more successful than others? This question changed my life.

From that day forward, I asked other salespeople for advice, especially on how to answer objections and close sales. I read every book I could find and practiced the best answers they contained. I listened to audio programs of top salespeople explaining their techniques. I attended sales seminars and sat up front.

Most of all, I took action on everything I learned. If it sounded good, I would go out immediately and try it on real, live prospects. I discovered later that this is the only way to learn, when there is a real possibility of succeeding or failing.

Above all, I learned how to ask for the order and to close the sale. I practiced every closing technique I found several times with hesitant prospects. Eventually I reached the point where I was completely unafraid to ask the prospect to make a buying decision. This skill quickly took me from rags to riches, from new salesperson to the top of every sales organization I ever worked for.

The Great Breakthrough

I later learned a remarkable thing: if you are completely fluent in closing and absolutely confident in your ability to ask for the order at the end of your sales presentation, you will be more aggressive about prospecting in the first place. You will have higher self-esteem and a better self-image. You will be more active each sales day, and you will even use your time better.

Because you know that you can close the sale, you will feel like a winner most of the time. This self-confidence will positively affect your prospects, making them even more likely to buy from you. Your whole sales career will move onto an upward spiral of increasing success.

The best news is that all sales skills, including closing, are learned and learnable. If you can drive a car, you can learn how to close the sale.

The best news is that all sales skills, including closing, are learned and learnable. If you can drive a car, you can learn how to close the sale. The only reason that you may be nervous about closing today is because you have not yet mastered the process. But once you learn to close, using these time-tested methods, you can use them over and over. As you do, you will get better and better.

In no time at all, you will be one of the most successful and highest-paid people in your field, and your future will be unlimited.

1
DEVELOPING A POWERFUL
SALES PERSONALITY

To be what we are, and to become what we are
capable of becoming, is the only real end of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

BECOMING EXCELLENT IN CLOSING SALES IS AN INSIDE job. It begins within you. In sales, your personality is more important than your product knowledge. It is more important than your sales skills. It is more important than the product or service that you are selling. In fact, your personality determines fully 80 percent of your sales success.