How to sell better: 3 steps to close more deals fast

The salesperson is one of the highest paid people on the face of this earth. Now it is time for you to become one. Somebody just starting off in sales asked me, how do I get successful at it?

Before anything else, you have to know your product. Say you are selling something as simple as a cordless keyboard. It comes with an owner's manual, so read it, understand it, get knowledgeable about the thing. The customer is going to ask what something does, and the answer cannot be, good question, I do not really know. You have to know.

Know how the money works

Second, understand how the money works. The customer gives you money, you give them the product. Simple enough. Except there is often financing available that most people never hear about, and the salesperson who knows those options makes deals the others cannot.

I will give you an example from my own shop. My office in Italy needed brand new servers, which are nothing more than really powerful computers, heavy duty and expensive. Normally I would set money aside every week until I had the full amount, then hand it over and say, go buy the servers. But we found out one of the manufacturers had a leasing option. I got the servers right away, kept my cash working, and made small monthly payments instead. I paid a little more in the end, sure. But here is the beautiful part: computers have a lifespan, so right when the lease is paid off, the machine is due for replacement anyway. I hand it back and they hand me a brand new one, all updated, all fancy, just the way my IT guys like it.

That is the kind of thing you need to know about whatever you sell: product knowledge and how the money works. Set those two off to the side, because now we get to the heart of it.

The three things you control

There are only three things you can control in selling: what you say, how you say it, and how often you say it. That is it, man.

What you say is your presentation, and the best presentation is not a speech. You could recite every fancy feature of your keyboard. Or you could say, let me show you this, and put the customer's finger on the button. Think about a car lot. Once they size you up, what is the first thing they have you do? A test drive. They demonstrate the car with you in the driver's seat. A clothing store has you try it on, piece after piece. Selling pens? Here is some paper, write with it, feel how smooth it is compared to yours.

You have to get people involved. If you keep them over there, they stay over there. Bring them over here, hunched over the desk with their hands on the product, and it is only over here that something gets done.

Issue the order

Here is the key thing most people in sales miss: you issue orders. People hear the word order and think there is a meanness to it, like you are the boss barking at somebody. That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Watch. Hi, how are you doing? You put your hand out. That is an order to shake your hand. Have a seat right here. That is an order. Push this button and tell me if you can feel the difference between this keyboard and that one. It is a command, delivered with a smile, and it gets a doingness happening.

So take a look at your own selling. Are you commanding the person to do something, or are you just talking at them? There are a billion things being sold out there in life, and the principle is the same for all of them. Give people an order and they get involved.

Acknowledge, handle, reissue

Most of the time they will not say yes to the first order. Fine. That is where the real selling starts. They say no. You listen to them all the way through, without cutting their communication. You acknowledge them: I get it, I understand. You handle whatever they said. And then you reissue the order. Go ahead, push the button. Oh, I feel silly. I understand, nobody is looking. Go ahead, push the button. I promise it will not bite.

I know this works because I sell something you cannot demonstrate at all. I am big in the energy business, with hundreds of people on the phones all day, all week, all year. Tell me, how do you demonstrate electricity? You cannot. It is invisible, and people already have it. So we built the order right into the call: go grab your bill, I will hold while you get it. The customer starts to say no, and my rep acknowledges, handles it, and reissues the order. That is what selling is like.

If you can stay in there and issue the order three or four times, you will increase your closing percentage by about fifty percent. I am telling you, that is a fact. When was the last time you heard of a class on how to buy something? Let that sink in. It does not exist, and people do not know how to interact with a salesperson. That is what you are up against. I am a professional salesperson, and even I hate walking onto a car lot, because those guys are so good I feel like a raw piece of meat in a lion's den. They take you through the system, hand you from one specialist to the next, and if they run that line right, you do not stand a chance. They control it. That control is exactly what you are building.

So: what do you say, how do you say it, how often do you say it. Issue the order. When they say no, acknowledge them, handle it, and reissue the order. Do that, and the sky is the limit.