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6 Reasons You May Not Be Closing The Sale

By Allison Babb

For solo entrepreneurs who are running a small business, or who are starting a small business, sales can often seem like a mystery. When it happens, you rejoice, but when it doesn’t you’re not quite sure why the customer didn’t buy or whether it’s something you’re not doing right.

For business owners who are juggling many tasks in running a business, sales is the task they’d rather hand off to someone else. I’ve had clients tell me “I just can’t do sales.” But how can you not do sales if you’re a business owner.

That said, I myself hated sales until I finally figured out how to do sales authentically and effortlessly. Closing the sale can actually be quite easy if you have a systematic way to accomplish that goal. From my experience, sales conversations go wrong for a few different reasons. Here are my top 6 reasons why you may not be closing the sale:

1) Barking up the wrong tree: You haven’t taken the time to discover if the prospect you are talking to is actually an ideal client for you. Someone who truly needs and can benefit from the product or service you provide. Come up with at least 3 powerful questions you can ask anyone to determine if they truly are worth the call or worth the conversation. This begins, of course, with first becoming intimately familiar with who your target market is.

2) Wrong timing: In your sales conversation, you must determine if your prospect is even ready to buy from you at that time. And there are key questions you can ask to quickly determine this. Some people are interested in what you have to sell, but the problem they need you to fix simply isn’t great enough for them to invest financially in solving it. It’s in your best interest to structure your sales conversation to quickly determine this so you don't waste your time.

3) It’s all about you: In your sales conversation with a prospect, you may be focusing far too heavily on who you are and what you have to offer. That’s actually backwards. Your focus should be heavily on discovering who the client is and what problems you can solve for them. You’ll know you’re making this mistake when you hear your own voice dominating the conversation, rather than your prospect’s.

4) You’re pitching vs questioning: I recently had an SEO company call me to sell me on their services. The problem was, they never stopped to ask me what my problems were in this area. They simply launched into their canned sales pitch. I don’t believe in canned sales pitches. That’s a turnoff to most people. Ditch the pitch. Instead, your sales conversations should be like an interview where you are discovering as much as you can about your prospect and their needs. Come up with questions that help you truly understand your prospect, their problems, and the solutions they are seeking.

5) You do a big dump of offers: One mistake I see happening in sales conversations is the business owner dumps all their product and service options on the client hoping the prospect will buy one. Instead, this creates confusion and overload. Carefully listen to the problems your prospect describes and share the most appropriate solution you have that can solve that problem. That said, you may have a couple offers that may be a match and can let the prospect choose which would be the best fit. But don’t do the "product-dump" desperately hoping they’ll pick one.

6) You don’t specifically ask for the sale: Sometimes small business owners wimp out on asking for the sale at the end of the sales conversation. So sales continue to slip through their fingers. You can ask authentically by simply inviting your prospect to get started and letting them know what forms of payment you accept. Often, the business owner shares the solutions they have, but never invites the prospect to take the next step of buying. “Which one of those options would you like to get started with?” “How would you like to pay for that?” “On what date would you like to get started?” These are all questions that specifically ask for the sale.

In my experience, closing the sale is an authentic process of you becoming the problem-solver for your potential client. You care enough to listen to what their key problems are in your area of expertise and you genuinely offer the right solutions that can help.

If you enjoyed this article, you'll love Allison's Ultimate Clients & Cash System that walks you through the complete step by step process for closing the sale most of the time; including specific questions to ask that create powerful and lucrative sales conversations.

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WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Allison Babb is an author, speaker and Small Business Coach to solo entrepreneurs. Allison publishes the "Small Business Success" weekly Ezine on how to create a steady stream of clients for your small business at: www.GreatSmallBusinessAdvice.com

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