Can You Train Someone How To Close A Deal?

As we ramp up our sales staff one of the things we find quite often in the interview process are people with great marketing knowledge, personality, and even business knowledge but sometimes are missing something that can, at times, be hard to determine in the interview process. Something a bit more intangible. The ability to close the deal when the customer is ready to buy or more importantly at the deciding point.

Being around various sales teams for years I can typically tell within 5 to 10 minutes if a person has the ability to get the deal done, it seems to be a pure personality trait that you can pick up on. People do not like to make decisions based purely in intangibles like that but more and more I think that you can tell by personality if a person has that capability.

At that point it really comes down to if they have the knowledge of the industry or general marketing and business sense to match the product or industry they are going to be selling in.

So, before I even get the the question in the title of this post, let me say, I do not think you can train someone to close a deal, some people just do not have the personality to ask someone for money even if they are giving something of high value in return. After many years thinking people were trainable in this regard I just do not think so. I think people may have minor levels of success but the time to train could be better spent using their skills elsewhere where they are more apt to excel.

That said, I think there are many people that have the ability to sell and close a deal but they are not recognized as sales people because they are in the wrong group in a company. I think it is much easier to train someone who has the natural ability to ask and close a deal to sell than it is to train someone who may have all the business knowledge but just does not have the personality to get it done.

The techniques can be taught to those who have the natural ability to hone their skill even further, but when you are starting with someone who does not innately have the skills to close the deal you are fighting against everything their psyche is telling them.

Do you think people can be taught to close? Or do you think good sales people just have the natural talent?

Overcoming Objections

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this at 4 this morning, probably not my best work but thought I would leave as is, it could be humorous.

As I prepare for our sales meeting today I was thinking about the one piece of the agenda that seems to be on every sales meeting agenda I have ever attended and it will be part of ours as well. That section is overcoming objections, or Challenge/Response.

No matter where I have been one of the ways I can tell the people who are going to have the fastest path to success are the ones that do not start every conversation with their sales management team with "But the customer asked INSERT OBJECTION HERE.." The people that never have to ask how to get around those questions have the easiest path in the sales world. They just naturally have a knack to know what to say ahead of time.

For the past 10 years I have noticed this same thing, it just is.

For those that do start with that question and focus on the challenges they will always have a harder time, typically this means they need more training on the sales process from those that have been through it successfully. It means they need to make sure they answer the questions before they get asked and need to be told what to expect.

Now, I will say, if you are at a company that just has poor products or solutions then overcoming objections may be tough. But if you are at a company where you believe in the solution then usually it is just a matter of training to get the person to never have to hear the objection again.

The way I have always approached sales, and I try to help anyone that is on my team approach sales, is to think ahead of time to what the potential objections may be. Depending on the type of company you are at it could be any one of a million things, but the trick is to recognize and morph your presentation to answer the questions before they even get asked.

This is very important, if there is a valid objection then maybe you cannot hit that one, but the way most successful sales people never get asked the tough questions is because they answer them before they even come up. If you can establish your product and your company and focus on talking about the key points that many customers have asked that you know you have a positive answer too then there is never a negative perception.

That is one thing that many people miss, once the customer asks a question there is always a chance that there will be a slight negative perception even if the answer is solid. But if you lead with the answers and establish yourself then that negative vibe never comes into play.

Many people just naturally approach sales this way, they focus on the positive and come in with a passion for their company or product that tells the customer that there is something good here, I should be interested. And that right there is what it is all about, passion. Whether it be a domain name, a dog house, a cellphone. It does not matter, if you can be passionate about it and they recognize that it is real, then most objections have been overcome automatically.