Expert Interview: The Secret to Shorter Sales Cycles
Whether you're selling to large corporations or one-on-one direct to consumer, shortening sales cycles is something that benefits not only you but your client as well. Find out how to shorten your sales cycle in the expert interview with Vincent Roazzi, nationally recognized sales trainer, coach and author of The Spirituality of Success: Getting Rich with Integrity.
In this very casual coaching call, I discuss with Vinny how and why salespeople should want to shorten their sales cycles. There are major gems in here, including understanding why people buy, how to present what they want, how to eliminate objections upfront and how to set the stage so your client can say, "Yes, solve my freakin' problem already!!!!!"
If you have any questions regarding how these can apply to your specific business, please comment on this post and I will relay them to Vinny.
Enjoy!!
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Jessica Magoch:Hello and welcome to the JPM Sales Partners in Virtual Sales Academy podcast series. Today we are talking about the one call close. How to do it, why it's so important, and why you may be losing sales because you're not doing it. This is Jessica Magoch your host and CEO of JPM Sales Partners and we have Vincent on the line, author of Spirituality of Success and his accomplishments are building multiple thousand plus person sales teams for startups and taking companies public. We are glad to have him here with his expertise. This series is very much like a coaching call that you are eavesdropping in on where I get to learn about some of these really important factors and how to help teach them better and train and mentor better. I'm gonna play some of the role of the devil's advocate or what people might be thinking out in the audience that can't interact. If things come up that I hear common objections to I'll bring them up on my end. Welcome.
Vincent Roazzi:Hi Jessica. Thank you for the opportunity. Hello everyone. Today we're gonna talk about-
Jessica Magoch:Today we're-We're talking about the one call close because it's a question I get a lot from people exactly why they should do it and why it's so important. I thought we could start talking about why it's important to do it and then tell them exactly some of the crucial elements of how to do it, how to maybe change their sales process now so that they can shorten those sales cycles and get a one call close.
Vincent Roazzi:I think that a lot more sales presentations fit into a one call close than most people realize. Of course a lot of it has to do with how you trained, but there's a disbelief out there that many products can't fit into a one call close. I've found that to be false. Basically because I think very often the sales process is misunderstood and secondly because there is some preliminary steps that aren't taught that are necessary in order to accomplish a one call close.
One call close. What is it and what is it not? To answer that question I think you have to first examine why is the salesperson there in the first place? What is the client situation that requires or requests a salesperson to be present? Very often it comes down to a client has a problem and they're looking to a certain product to solve that problem. Very often, maybe not so often, but sometimes the product has a lot of knowledge that's needed in order to make a successful purchase upon which they rely on the salesperson. Secondly, I think this is probably more common, is that people have a difficult time making a decision. Nobody's afraid of making the right decision, but everybody's definitely afraid of making the wrong decision. That's why they have a salesperson present. In most circumstances they're really relying on you to help them to come to that decision. They may be doing it subconsciously, but I think in most cases that's exactly what the situation is. That the client is afraid of making the wrong decision so they want professional advice from somebody who knows the industry and knows the product well.
The question is why am I there. To be honest with you, when I first meet a client and sit down and talk to them and after we go through the niceties of what I call the getting to know you period or the, what do you call it Jessica in your training? The warm up. Jessica uses the warm up in her training. It's really getting to know you on a personal level. It's not about business. One of the things that people forget is that salespeople are people too and the more real you make yourself to them, the more possibility you have for them to trust you to help them to solve their problem. After the warm up, the first question that I always ask is why am I here. If you just be quiet and listen, the client will tell you exactly why you're there. Almost without question they're going to mention a problem that they're trying to solve and they're looking to you to help them solve it.
Also when is the best time to make a decision to solve a problem? How long do you want to keep having this problem? I would imagine that if, I consider myself pretty normal, but if I have a problem I'd like to get it over with as quickly as possible. That leads you to believe that the one call close is probably more applicable than most people think.
Jessica Magoch:It seems like it's the best way to actually serve your client. Right? To encourage them to solve their problem more quickly?
Vincent Roazzi:Well yeah, but occasionally you do come across clients who like to hold on to their problems for awhile. I know it's psychologically weird, but-
Jessica Magoch:The devil you don't know is better than the devil ... No. What is it? The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.
Vincent Roazzi:Yeah. Really what it boils down to is they're just afraid to make a decision. You haven't given them the confidence and the trust in you because basically they want you to make the decision for them. That's what you're building during the warm up process, the getting to know you period, and all through the presentation.
Jessica Magoch:It sounds like you're talking about one on one sales like direct to consumer or a small business owner where there's one decision maker. Is this true where there's multiple decision makers? Let's say I'm selling to a large corperation or a government or a school. How do, maybe you plan on going into that later, how do you then coordinate it so that you can actually help them solve their problem that day?
Vincent Roazzi:Well depending on the product there may be prior steps that need to be accomplished. For instance, you may have to speak to a committee and then ultimately to the decision maker because the committee is not the decision maker or perhaps your company requires a precertification of the client for some reason or another, but there does come a time where a decision needs to be made.
Jessica Magoch:Are you talking about the final decision or you know like when I think about the sales process and each step you have to close each step, so are you talking about ... Let's say I have a meeting with one department and then the next step or the close would be to book a meeting with the next department or to get on to the RFT list, the vendor list or something like that. Let's say there's steps I have to complete. When you say close the sale is it just the final decision to write a check or is it also like the steps you have to close throughout the sales process? In other words, if I'm going on an appointment to try to get on the vendor list, a one call close could be making the decision to get me on the vendor list at the end of that meeting.
Vincent Roazzi:Right. That would be the final decision. Of course there may be other decisions along the way which require a close, like you're saying, but more importantly, I think, a lot of salespeople close, or at least they say they close, they call this a close, that when they're finished with everything that they have to do in order for the client to make a decision, they'll close by saying, well what do you think. Which is opening up yourself for a massive amount of objections-
Jessica Magoch:It means so tell me what reasons you shouldn't buy today.
Vincent Roazzi:Yeah. It invites the let me think about it answer. Yeah I'm sold. Come in next year and I'll give you a check. I'll mention it to so and so and we'll get going on it in the next week or two. I think it really just comes down to the proper way to close a sale. That could take, depending again on the product, it may take multiple steps to get there but at some point a final decision must be made. That's when the one call close applies. It's not why don't you think about it and get back to me. It's coming to a decision when a decision is applicable. Let's put it that way. Am I making any sense?
Jessica Magoch:Am I interpreting the meaning of when a decision is applicable to have something to do with ... I mean, I don't know if you were going to mention this, but also as close to the end of the presentation as possible? It seems like to you one call close you actually have to follow all the steps of closing the sale. Right? Because it's got to be an expectation that's set way up in the beginning.
Vincent Roazzi:Right.
Jessica Magoch:Of course if you don't have a relationship they're not going to trust that anything you said during the presentation was true. They would have to do some research and deliberate and compare options and things like that.
Vincent Roazzi:More importantly, I think in order to do a one call close you must pre-close.
Jessica Magoch:Right right. [inaudible 00:13:38] too much to go into on this call.
Vincent Roazzi:What a pre-close does is establish the fact that if I can solve your problem today at the price that fits your budget are you ready to solve your problem? There's two answers to that. Yes and no. If they say no you'd want to know why. Maybe they have further appointments with competition in which case you'd be better off to reschedule until after they listen to all the other presentations and be the last one in the door because the last person in the door makes the sale. Perhaps they don't have the finances, but they want to find out more about the product so that six months or a year from now when they do have the finances they'll go forward. That doesn't do them any good and it doesn't do you any good because six months to a year from now many things can change including, and most importantly, their retention of what you said during the presentation process.
Jessica Magoch:They're not gonna remember it five minutes after so definitely yeah.
Vincent Roazzi:You're opening up yourself and your company for a ton of complaints because oh the salesperson didn't say that to me. You know? Definitely not a good strategy.
Jessica Magoch:Well and also like if we're talking about emotional intelligence and how people make decisions, they literally make decisions first emotionally and then back them up with logic. But the problem is that emotions don't last very long. An hour after you leave them they could be experiencing totally different emotions based on other events that happened. We've learned that as humans we need to have that emotional experience to actually make a decision. That's gonna be the highest right after you make a presentation or after you present the offer.
Vincent Roazzi:Yes. Actually the decision is probably, I believe it's made during the warm up when you're first talking to them and showing them that you're a person just like they are. You have the same trials and tribulations and family life and all the other things. Maybe you went to college and they went to college and who knows where they went and you went. However you find common ground to let them know that you're a real person and not just a robot that's there to spew out information. Because really what you give them from that point on is the items they'll use for the logic on the purchase of the product. Almost everything that you mention in the presentation becomes the logic that they use, but they've already decided anyway.
What a client does during a presentation is they don't listen with their ears, they listen with their eyes. They're looking for reasons why they can or can't trust you. If they can't find any reason why they can't trust you then they trust you because they're looking for reasons why they can't. When they can't find any then they have confidence in the fact that you're a trustworthy salesperson, you're a professional, you're selling a good product for a good company at a good price, and the things that you say during the presentation gives them the logic that they need to be able to answer somebody's question about well why did you buy that particular product. How do we know that's true? Poor products are sold everyday by salespeople with fast lines so to speak.
When you get into the process of the one call close whether you do it or not determines really if you're working in service for the client in the best capacity that you can because again, you're there because they're trying to solve a problem and how long do they need to have this problem. You don't want to be the cause of them perpetuating having the problem longer than they need to. Whether they're there because they needed information or because they need somebody to help them make a decision, which is usually the case, under either circumstance it's always best to help the client solve their problem as quickly as possible. That's why you should do a one call close and as I said before, believe it or not it applies to many more products than you can imagine. A lot of people think that maybe you should do an introduction first or a test trial, especially if it's an incoming call. One thing you get to learn as you become more professional in the trade is that if a client agrees to an appointment with you then the sale's already made. If the sale's already made then why not a one call close? Why do you need to have multiple closes unless of course you're talking about corporate sales where there's many different levels of decision making in closing.
Jessica Magoch:The goal is to do a one call close for each step that you need to close.
Vincent Roazzi:Correct.
Jessica Magoch:Close to get to the next appointment, to the next decision maker. You mentioned something ... Right to break it down into multiple sales instead of thinking of it as one big sale.
Vincent Roazzi:Right.
Jessica Magoch:You mentioned that when you're with a customer they're listening with their eyes not their ears.
Vincent Roazzi:I'm sorry go ahead.
Jessica Magoch:Is it more difficult to do a one call close if you're selling over the phone?
Vincent Roazzi:Oh infinitely more difficult. You can. It takes very specific and very intense training to do that, but obviously it's done. People buy from people. If you can make yourself human and create the emotion on the telephone, which is difficult, then yes it's entirely possible. Of course, if they've called you it's even more possible because again, they're already sold on whether or not they need the product the only question is from who. That's really what it boils down to.
Jessica Magoch:I've also found that sometimes even when sales can be made over the phone or they are made over the phone there is problems that come up down the line that wouldn't have if you were there face to face. As far as retention, retentions concerned or renewals and recurring payments like they're less likely to stick longer without that solid relationship. It just seems a lot more strong in person.
Vincent Roazzi:Yeah it's a lot easier to say no to somebody you've never met. If that's what you're alluding to, the answer is yes absolutely.
Jessica Magoch:No I mean post-sale. After you've made a sale over the phone but never met the person, then when they have customer service issues it just seems like they're more difficult to resolve because that trust isn't fully there.
Vincent Roazzi:Right well because they'd probably call you anyway. They had a problem and they trusted you they'd probably call you first anyway, or at least that would be their inclination. Of course you always want to tell them please call customer service first and see if they can solve your problem and if they can't by all means call me.
Jessica Magoch:I was just wondering if that was your experience too. That retention is lower with phone sales or inside sales or telemarketing versus outside sales, face to face. I guess it depends on the competition too. If you don't have competition that's going face to face then they don't have ... It's a stronger strategy, but if none of your competition's doing it ...
Vincent Roazzi:I could tell you for a fact that showing up in person beats the telephone every time. In many ways sales is illogical. It just doesn't make sense. For instance, yes you can speak to more people on the telephone, but you can make more sales face to face. You would think if you could speak to more people on the telephone you'd make more sales. No that's not true because sales isn't about speaking to people. Sales is about emotions. Sales is about relationship. That's very hard to communicate on the telephone unless of course you've had some intense training in doing so. If you put me up against a person on the telephone, even a top-notch phone professional, I'll beat them every time because I'll be there in person. Even if I could've called up and done the sale on the phone because as you said, it increases retention and encourages renewals if that's part of what your product is involved in your product.
Jessica Magoch:Yeah and referrals.
Vincent Roazzi:Yes let's not forget referrals otherwise we're actually gonna have to work for the rest of our lives.
Jessica Magoch:[inaudible 00:25:33] sales burnout.
Vincent Roazzi:That's the good part of sales. If you concentrate on getting referrals you don't have to work that hard. The highest paid profession in the world gets to be easy if you do things the correct way.
Jessica Magoch:Yeah. All right. I totally side-tracked you there, but if there was something else you wanted to say about making a one call close or how to do it, I think you were on your way to saying something else and I side-tracked you with that question about face to face sales. I think you were gonna say how to go about doing it, but I don't want to assume.
Vincent Roazzi:The one call close is really rather easy because a one call close usually comes down to the assumed sale. You just are filling out the application or the purchase order or whatever is involved because you've already pre-closed for the sale. If there were any objections to you closing that day then you would have received them during the pre-close. That's why the pre-close is important during the qualification process. That's part of the qualification process. In other words, like I said before, I'm here obvious because you have a problem you want to solve and if we could solve that problem at a price you could afford are you ready to solve your problem today? Like I said there are only two answers. Yes or no unless they have other appointments with the competition. People tend to keep their word. Even if you gave them every reason to buy, very often they'll not say yes even though there's every reason to say yes because they've already committed to another appointment with somebody else. People like to live up to their commitments. Even though you solve their problem at a price that they doubt they could beat anyway.
That's why it's important to be the last one in the door. Tell them I've got an outstanding program and an outstanding price, get the information from other people and you'll be able to recognize it when we sit down and talk. When is your last appointment with somebody from this industry? A week from now? Okay good then why don't we make it for the following Monday, two Mondays from now? You'll have all the information and then you'll be able to see how superior our program is. That's how you wind up with a sale even though the competition is actively engaged in the process.
Jessica Magoch:It sounds like it's in everyone's best interest to do a one call close. If the salesperson doesn't have to go back a hundred times they're more likely to make a sale that sticks longer and gets referrals because of the service was so impeccable. The client gets their problem solved more quickly.
Vincent Roazzi:Correct.
Jessica Magoch:Why shouldn't you do a one call close? Is there any time when you shouldn't because I know that some people teach that you shouldn't do a one call close. What do you think about that?
Vincent Roazzi:I think people teach what they know. If they don't know or don't believe that a one call close is possible then that's now what they're going to train. As I said when we first began this conversation you'd be surprised how many products actually do fit into a one call close scenario despite what many people think. I remember this one young lady that I was training and she was selling master's programs, online master's programs, which cost $85,000. She was doing it on the phone. The people that she was speaking to were call-ins so they were already sold on the idea, they didn't know how much it costs, but the availability of student loans was plentiful. That objection really was easy to overcome. Her company would teach her three and four step close. Of course when I told her that she could do a one step close she was highly skeptical, but eventually I convinced her and she became the top salesperson in her company because she didn't have to go three or four times to make the same sale that everybody was going, was making four visits to get.
She made better use of her time which allowed her to make more sales. Even an $85,000 sale that you've got to borrow the money for on the telephone was able to be closed with a one call close. That's probably one of the most difficult situations you can find yourself in. Again, the only other real challenge to a one call close is when there's multiple steps in the sales process. Sometimes you have no control. If your first call on the client is to gather information for your company to pre-certify them then obvious you can't do a one call close.
Jessica Magoch:The first step is to qualify them to see if they're ready to have an appointment, a phone call to set an appointment.
Vincent Roazzi:Yeah maybe they need to have a certain business rating or a certain credit score rating or whatever. They probably should construct a better process to get that information than to use their salespeople because salespeople are best at making sales not gather information. Companies are companies and they'll have their own ways of doing things. It depends on the company's program whether it allows you to be able to make a one call close also. If there's multiple steps, every step is a one call close that leads onto the next step. I think I've given you the information that you need to at least try to convert your sales situation into a one call close. Again, so that you can speak to more people, increase your sales, which will then increase your income which is high up there on one of the reasons why you should be doing it. The most important reason is that's the best service you can do for the client. The second most important reason is it's the best thing you can do for you and your family.
Jessica Magoch:Speaking of family I have a three year old home sick who is coming up on his time limit for watching iPad in one sitting. He's getting antsy. That was amazing. Thank you so much-
Vincent Roazzi:It was my pleasure.
Jessica Magoch:-for sharing.
Vincent Roazzi:If anybody has any questions I'll be happy to answer them even if they're specific. As I said, you'd be surprised how many products actually lend themselves to a one call close.
Jessica Magoch:Yeah I mean I'm sure people will have specific questions about can I really do this for my business, for my product, or that's just not how it's done in my industry. I hear that a lot, but I challenge people to say how can you apply it or-
Vincent Roazzi:My manager says your crazy, it's impossible and up field and blah blah blah.
Jessica Magoch:Everyone else is not the top percent. Right? You want to do the opposite of everyone else.
Vincent Roazzi:It's like I said before, people train and advise what they know. If you don't have enough experience doing a one call close then it's almost as if it's a foreign country.
Jessica Magoch:I think it also could be like maybe selling yourself short when you're comparing yourself regarding metrics. I've worked with someone who said, she was doing online demos for her product and I asked her what her close ratio was, she said oh 30%. I said, well I think we can work on that, get that much higher. At least above 50%. She said, "Well isn't that standard in the industry?" She had read a metric that an average close ration for an online demo was 30% close ratio. I said, "But that's the status quo. You don't want to be average right?" I think it's also you find these statistics and these numbers and it takes an average of seven calls to close a sale or something like that and you just assume it to be true and there's no way to manipulate it or change it. Again, if it's what everyone else is doing and everyone else is struggling to make sales then maybe it's not necessarily the way to follow or the metric you want to put yourself up against. Double it.
Vincent Roazzi:Earlier in the conversation I said that sales is the highest paid profession in the world. It is. But at the same time it's also the lowest paid profession in the world. Usually if you're talking about the average metric then you're talking about the part of the people that make it the lowest paid profession in the world. I mean I'm talking commission sales because usually the bases are so low that they wouldn't support the average family. If you're going to do the average then you're going to probably not be very happy with the income that goes along with that. Yes if 30% is the average you want to be twice that. You want to be experiencing the part of sales that makes it the highest paid profession in the world not the lowest paid profession in the world. Your advice to her was absolutely correct. The average metric won't probably not feed the average family. I think you were right in that regard.
Jessica Magoch:Yeah sometimes it's difficult to coach people out of these commonly held truths in sales.
Vincent Roazzi:Especially if your company is teaching a two, three, four step close. This is the way we want you to do it. That's because they're afraid you're going to take a five, six, seven, eight step approach which a lot of salespeople would do because for some crazy reason they, whether it's not being confident in their product or in themselves or their industry or whatever, they ... The number, you probably know better than I do, that the 90% of people of 75% of people never even ask for the sale at all. No matter how many steps they take. They never ask for the actual sale so they never close. [crosstalk 00:39:40] talking to somebody like that about a one call close, again you might as well be speaking a foreign language to them.
Jessica Magoch:I remember another one like it used to take, in like 1990 something or other, it took like four cold calls to reach a customer and today it takes 11. I'm thinking like if it takes 11 cold calls for someone to finally take your call there's something wrong with what you're saying. You're not coming across to them as someone who can help them solve their problem quickly. There's some reason why. You're just blending in with all the other cold callers if it's going to take ... 11 is the average so that means some people are doing 20 and some people are doing eight. Either do something else, don't cold call, or figure out why it's taking you so many calls for someone to pay attention to you.
Vincent Roazzi:Yeah. Okay. I hope that helps everyone and again if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them individually. You can relay them through Jessica that would be great.
Jessica Magoch:Okay. You can grab us at info@jpmpartners.com if you have any questions for Vinny I'll relay them to him and maybe we'll do a follow up. If there's enough questions we'll do a follow up on some specific questions for specific industries or products.
Vincent Roazzi:Bye everyone.
Jessica Magoch:Say goodbye to everybody Tony.
Vincent Roazzi:Happy sales day.
Jessica Magoch:Happy sales day. Bye.
Vincent Roazzi:Bye-bye.