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The Sales Buzz Issue 170 - Alternative Sales Closing Techniques
August 15, 2012
Hi,

Alternative sales closing techniques are old fashioned, out of date, and only used by fast talking sales people that are not looking for repeat business.

But this can be a really useful technique if used in a certain way...



Alternative Sales Closing Techniques

Alternative sales closing techniques are old fashioned, out of date, and most buyers are aware of the technique. But this can be a really useful technique if used in a certain way.

The old way of using an alternative closing technique was to offer a prospect a choice of usually two alternatives and when they make their selection the sales person assumes, or pretends to assume, that by making the choice the prospect is committing to buying.


For example:

Seller: Which one do you prefer, Red or Blue?
Prospect: The red one looks best.
Seller: Good choice, I’ll wrap it for you.

The alternative question asked which one the prospect preferred. It did not ask which one they wanted to buy.

The buyer takes the answer to mean that the prospect wants to buy the red one and goes into an assumptive closing technique that they hope will carry the prospect along with them.

Closing a sale with this technique in its original format is still used in quick one off sales where the seller is not looking for repeat business or referrals.

In most other scenarios buyers will not fall for such linguistic tricks and manipulation techniques and a more professional approach has to be taken.

The good news is: With a few changes, adaptations, and development, alternative sales closing techniques can be used for closing a sale in a modern professional sales setting with B2B and Direct Sales prospects.


So here are some ideas on closing a sale with alternative closing techniques...


Just a Step in the Agreement Gaining Process

Now let’s take this old fashioned trick for closing a sale and develop it into a modern technique that will work ethically with all prospects.

To do that we use it as a step in the sales process that will gain agreement from the buyer and make the actual close a lot easier.

We can use this alternative technique to gain agreement to one of the two alternative sales offers that we present to the prospect. The alternatives can be totally separate sales offers or two variations of the same offer.

For example:

In car sales your alternatives could be an offer of two completely different cars that both meet the prospects needs. Or, you could be presenting just the one car but with two different ways of purchasing it, such as cash or credit agreement.



Now gain Agreement

When you gain agreement in your sales process you are another step closer to closing the sale.

Each time you gain agreement in your sales presentation it is like a mini-close. As you build up all these mini-closes you are securing the sale because the prospect is saying yes to the individual elements of the item or service you are selling.

By building all this agreement into your sales process you will make it harder for them to say no or raise a sales objection when you ask the final question to close the sale.

The Alternative Sales Closing Techniques give you the opportunity to gain agreement from the buyer and this can be used to move a step closer towards closing the sale but you haven’t closed yet.


And that brings us to an important question:

How do you close a sale?

How do you ask for the order after the buyer has given some commitment to one of your alternatives. For many sales people this is an area that they would like to improve, and for good reason.

I manage and train teams of sales people and they all need to be expert closers, they need to know how to ask for the sale. Showing them how to do that is my job.

I’ve put together my ideas on closing a sale in an eBook training course. It has 40 concise pages so you can put it into action the same day. The course shows you how I train my sales teams to close sales and we’ve had some really good improvements in results with this course. The cost of the course is just £9.99 that’s around $15 You can download the course or see more information at How to close a sale...








I'm Stephen Craine from the website Sales-Training-Sales-Tips.com

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