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Selling Skills

The main reason you haven’t closed the sale today

Attending my local Arizona chapter of Meeting Professionals International is always a treat. My friend and tech guru, Jim Spellos, was presenting and I was in Arizona so there was every reason to attend.

When registering, the CVent form asked if I wanted to buy raffle tickets and I just wanted to quickly complete the registration (and I didn’t know what the prizes were being offered even though I know I should do it just to support the chapter ;-)), so I didn’t tick those boxes.

No one approached me about buying tickets during the networking time prior to the meeting.

Before Jim speaks, announcements are made including a reminder to purchase raffle tickets. A sweet woman at the lunch table says to us, “Do you all have your raffle tickets?” and she shows us a bunch of the tickets that she has for sale. Two people said yes, and the rest of us each mumbled something, mainly “oh, not yet!” With a few more minutes to go, I was waiting, waiting, waiting that she would say, “So, how many tickets would you like, Sue, Name, Name, Name? You can win great prizes and support the chapter? Sue, will that be 3, 5 or 10?”

She didn’t follow-up her initial question and I’m betting that she thinks that she asked for the sale. In her volunteer debrief, she will be likely to explain that she got her courage up and asked everyone at the table if they had raffle tickets.

And she did.

But she didn’t ask for the sale.

She didn’t motivate us to buy.

She didn’t make it easy to buy.

She left money on the table.

The main reason sales don’t close is because we don’t ask for the next step, give a compelling reason to take it, and make it super easy for them to do so.

Check the last 3 emails you sent. Replay the recordings of your last 3 sales calls. Did you ask for the business? Really? Did you help them want to advance the sale with you? Really?

Tell us what you said and if you’d like, I’m happy to provide feedback and comments on your approach.

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