As you proceed through each step of the sales encounter with your prospect, your levels of urgency, formality, and excitement should increase, little by little.
It’s like going on a first date. You don’t want to come on too strong, but you also don’t want to seem bored.
The intro starts out calm and casual. You want to build rapport at this point, making the prospect feel comfortable talking with you.
If the prospect wants to go on a 5-minute tangent about something irrelevant during rapport building, let them go. It’s worth your time to let them talk. It’s a weird thing that people like you more, the more they talk to you (even if you say nothing).
As you start to qualify, your questions should be a little more direct and clear. It shouldn’t feel like an interrogation for the prospect, but you need to dig in if they give an unclear answer.
When you start to pitch, it should get a little hotter. You might stand up from your chair and start to use hand motions. Especially when you’re selling value, you want to get excited and raise your voice just a little bit.
But make sure you don’t “steamroll” your prospect. You can’t keep increasing urgency and raising your voice if they’re not along for the ride. If you’re getting more excited and they’re staying monotone and flat—that’s a bad sign.
The key is to listen. Similar to a musician that can hear a note and tell you what key on the piano is being played, a salesperson needs to be able to discern a prospect’s emotion from the tone of their voice. Make sure you’re matching your prospect’s tone with your own voice.
This all builds up to asking for the sale. You should be able to hear a pin drop for the first few seconds after you’ve asked for the sale for the first time.
If the prospect viewed you as a friend during rapport building, they should now see you as a professional that has the power to help them and their business.
After we’ve asked for the close, we won’t let the prospect go off on any more tangents. We don’t want to let them blow wind into the sails of their own objections. Our answers are short and stern, almost like a parent talking to a child, without being offensive.
If you do all of this correctly, your prospect will both like you and respect you—a winning combination for making the sale.