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Picture this situation: this time you are sure you will be closing the deal. You are so excited that you tell your family they no longer need jobs; this is the deal that is meant to make you rich.
You enter the closing call with confidence. But, as the conversation goes on, you begin to feel insecure. Closing the deal is way harder than you thought it would be: the prospect is giving you objections to which you have no idea how to respond.
Dissatisfied with your answers, the prospect hangs up. And you wonder, “Why do I constantly have difficulties closing the deal?”
If this scenario seems somewhat familiar to you, you are not alone. Closing a deal is a skill set that needs to be learned, developed, and honed.
Whether you are new in the game or a veteran, closing deals is always challenging. There will always be those prospects who simply seem un-closeable.
According to studies, only 12% of salespeople are excellent; 23% are good, 38% are average, and 27% are poor. If you don’t feel like an excellent closer yet, you aren’t alone.
When you don’t manage to close someone, don’t blame yourself. You are not the problem. Doubt your skills, but never doubt yourself. Don’t take a lost sale personally; focus on sharpening your skills instead.
In this article, we’ll show you what to focus on if you are having trouble closing the deal. We’ll explain what most closers usually struggle with, so you can go in and see what applies to you.
Again, don’t worry. Closing has nothing to do with your personality or who you are as a human being: it’s simply a skill that can be improved. Keep that in mind as you read on, and uncover why you probably have problems with closing deals.
When you are having difficulties closing the deal, you might be too focused on yourself. A closing call should be about the prospect.
Good closing is based on empathy; you want to shift your focus on the buyer. What do they really need from you? Why are they on the call with you in the first place?
Many people get nervous during closing. They are afraid to sound stupid or that they will say the wrong thing. As a result, they focus too much on themselves. Instead of actively listening to the prospect, they try to come up with the perfect sentence.
This creates a disconnect between you and the prospect: you fail to identify their real needs and they don’t feel motivated to buy. So, if you notice you are too focused on yourself, what can you do? Well, the easiest thing to do is to shift your focus.
Instead of being fearful of what they think about you, focus on how they feel. Did you make them feel respected? Do they feel welcome on the call? When you shift focus like that, there is nothing to be nervous about, and closing the deal becomes easier.
Another possible reason why you are having trouble closing the deal might be that you are dominating the conversation.
Dan Lok has a saying: in a great closing call, the buyer does 80% of the talking. You, the closer, focus on asking questions that get the buyer to talk.
But why is it so important to ask questions during a closing call? Because you want your prospect to come up with the ideas and solutions themselves. When you tell them what you think they should do, it’s easy for them to reject you, but if it’s their own idea, it becomes their truth.
So, use your questions to guide them to a solution that is favorable for them, which will allow you to close the deal.
Be mindful of how you phrase your questions. If you come across as sneaky and manipulative, you might drive them further away from the close. Again, really show you care and make sure everything you say comes from a place of empathy.
If you notice yourself talking too much during a closing conversation, here’s what you can do: phrase your thought as a question.
For example, instead of sayingyou need a different solution for your problem, you could say: How do you plan to overcome this? Your prospect will then tell you that they need a different solution; you guided them to say what you initially wanted to say.
All of Dan Lok's top closers know that when you say something, it means something, but when your prospect says something, it means everything.
This is a common difficulty many people face - even outside of the closing context. We always think we have to fill every pause with words; we want to avoid the “awkward silence.”
However, silence is golden when you are closing. There are some parts of a closing call where you absolutely want to be silent. The right pause at the right time gives you authority. Great closer balances being an authority with being quiet at the right time.
The reason for this is that your silence invites the prospect to speak. You can focus on listening and guiding the conversation with your questions.
You especially want to use silence once you have told the prospect the price of your product. Even if you are thinking the price might have shocked them, don’t say anything: you want to wait for their response.
While some closers focus too much on themselves, others focus too much on the product or service. That, too, could make it difficult to close the deal.
Focusing too much on the product means that you are talking too much about the features and benefits. When selling a computer, for example, the mistake would be to focus on technical stats such as RAM-storage, battery endurance, and so on.
While it’s good to know these aspects, it’s not what motivates your prospect to buy. To move them to a purchasing decision, focus on what it means for them.
What is the result of using your product or service? What are you really selling? For the computer, the outcome could be getting work done faster, becoming part of a certain community, or bettering themselves.
You aren’t really selling a product and you are also not selling features or benefits: you are selling emotions and feelings.
So, don’t be a slimy, used car salesman pushing the features of your product. Instead, paint a picture in their mind of what it will mean for their future, and focus on the emotions they’ll get from it - closing the deal will be easier.
When closing deals, sooner or later you face objections. Not every prospect is easy to close; they might also give you reasons why they aren’t ready to buy.
Getting objections is normal, and it’s no problem if you know how to handle them. But, if your closing skill isn’t fully honed yet, objections might get you into a “justification mode.”
You aren't able to redirect by asking the right questions. Instead, you justify and explain why the objection is not true.
So, when a prospect says this is too expensive, you might start to give them reasons why the price is good. That doesn’t tend to work, and it actually makes closing the deal immensely harder.
Be aware that you don’t have to explain yourself. If you notice that you often justify yourself during a closing call, here’s what you want to do instead.
Use questions to make your prospect see the value of what you do. If the product or service you sell is good to begin with, then there is no reason to explain or justify yourself.
Another reason why you have difficulties closing the deal might be your frame. How do you feel during the call - like an authority or like a customer service representative?
If you are too focused on pleasing the prospect and making them feel too good, you might lose the sale.
You want to be respectful and understanding, but you also want to be an authority. Be decisive in your statements and clearly tell your prospect what you can and can’t do for them. You don’t need to explain yourself or justify your value.
If you think being an authority is a problem for you, then you might wonder what to do. It’s a good idea to check your posture and learn about power poses. Your body language can work for and against you, even if you are on the phone.
Most salespeople focus on creating a pleasant experience for the prospect. This is right to some degree - you want them to feel respected. You want them to know they made the right choice to get on a call with you.
But closing the deal requires that your prospect goes through some pain. A closing call isn’t necessarily a pleasant experience.
After all, you want them to buy. You want them to buy from you because your product or service allows them to make a better life for themselves.
Most people don’t change easily. Especially when a person is comfortable: they might feel no urgent need to change their situation. You need to help them see what would happen if they kept doing what they already do, and why they need to act now.
This might sound contradictory, but your being too nice is e actually not helping your prospect. You give them the possibility to come up with excuses as they tell themselves that they are “fine”. That’s why closing the deal is noble: you are doing others a great service.
You Didn’t Create Enough Urgency
As we’d already mentioned, people need a reason why they should act now. After all, change is hard for people. Most would rather wait and see before they act.
Unfortunately, most people only act when it’s too late. Maybe you’ve heard the saying it’s much easier to sell a cure than to sell prevention. Most prospects are looking to buy their way out of something.
This concept allows you to close deals much easier, as you understand why you need to create urgency. Simple questions like what happens if you don’t solve this problem can already create urgency for your prospect.
Show them what might happen if they wait too long; then show them how much easier or better their life will be if they act now.
If there is no urgency, closing the deal becomes harder. The prospect might give you objections like I need to think about it or I want to do this later.
This is one of the most common obstacles people face when closing a deal. They might get everything perfect: they build up empathy, uncover the prospect’s needs, ask the right questions, and focus on listening.
But money coming into play makes them crumble. The prospect feels that you are uncomfortable, and they might try to negotiate. They might even think you don’t believe in the value of your own product.
Being uncomfortable with money talk makes closing the deal so much harder. Unfortunately, many of us are programmed to have negative beliefs about money.
We might believe money is dirty, hard to obtain, or “the root of all evil.” If you have thoughts like these, closing the deal is almost impossible.
During a close, your emotions transfer to your prospect. If you are uncomfortable, they feel it; this creates a break in the conversation that might damage the trust and empathy between you and the prospect.
But what can you do, if you are uncomfortable with asking for money? The best thing you can do is to practice... over and over and over. That’s exactly what Dan Lok did, too.
In his 20s, Dan learned from his first mentor, Alan Jacques. One day Alan asked Dan to double his prices for his copywriting services; Dan was really uncomfortable about it, as he didn’t believe his clients would pay that much.
But Alan wasn’t open for discussion about it, and Dan had to raise his prices. So, what did Dan do? He practiced in front of the mirror saying his new price point. In the beginning, he would stutter and feel badly about it, but after a few tries, he could say it with some confidence. The next time he had a client on the phone, he asked for double the money and he closed the deal.
Finally, you might have trouble closing the deal because you are putting too much pressure on yourself.
As we said before, when you have problems with closing, don’t doubt yourself in terms of personality or who you are: you aren’t broken. Instead, doubt your skills.
Maybe you just never learned how to close - most salespeople don’t. Common sales training is usually outdated and teaches techniques that don’t work on today’s buyers.
So, when you have trouble closing the deal, take a deep breath, and cut yourself some slack. Don’t try to get it all perfect at once. Instead, improve your skill step by step. Maybe it takes you a bit longer, but, once you have the skill, it’s yours forever.
Even experienced closers like Dan Lok are still learning and improving. So, don’t beat yourself up about not closing a deal.
Before you get to a yes, you’ll likely receive a few rejections. And that’s okay. In fact, it teaches you resilience. If you get a rejection once in a while, it won’t hurt you anymore - because you won’t let it affect you personally. You know it might just be your skill that needs improvement.
If you are having difficulties closing the deal, it might be a good idea to work with a script. You technically don’t need a script to be a good closer, but it might give you extra security.
A script also allows you to practice within a proven framework. It also helps you to measure your improvements.
Since many people have trouble closing, Dan decided to put his word-for-word script up for sale. It's called the Perfect Closing Script Digital Training. He takes you through his process step by step, so you know what to say and when.
The Perfect Closing Script allows you to close without being slimy, pushy, or unethical.
If you want to improve your closing skill with Dan’s help, check out the Perfect Closing Script Digital Training here.
