The insanity close is using the same close on everyone or arbitrarily selecting a close from a list. Let’s use a different context to expose this insanity. Imagine you are sitting at a blackjack table in Vegas with a $10,000 bet on the table. The dealer lets you call your blackjack expert friend to ask if you should take another card. Instead of asking what cards you have already been dealt and what the dealer is showing, your friend says today is Tuesday and I never take another card on Tuesdays.
This is no different from a salesperson who, without regard for the prospect or situation, selects the Choice Close because it is the one the salesperson likes the best. Research shows the Choice Close is very effective with people who have what is known as the Politician Temperament, who by nature love making decisions. However, the Choice Close almost always backfires with people who have the risk-averse Doublechecker Temperament.
In fact, using the Choice Close on people with the Doublechecker Temperament is the equivalent of taking another card in blackjack when you already have a ten and a Jack and the dealer is showing 19. Since you are showing 20, the chances of you winning if you use the “Don’t Take another Card if you are showing over 19” strategy are 100%, while the chances of going bust if you use the strategy of “Take another Card in the hopes of getting a Blackjack” strategy are so high, that to do so, means that you are acting in an insane way or you are drunk.
So what about your company. Are you using the same close with everyone, or do you give your salespeople a list of possible closes without clear direction on which close to use in any given situation? If so, you are not alone. A quick search on the phrase closing strategies returns over 28-thousand articles from people who explain up to 20 different closing strategies, yet none of them say with certainty which close to use in any given situation.
The big news is that simply by training your salespeople to choose the close with the greatest odds of working in any given situation, you can instantly improve sales performance. Your odds of winning the sale skyrocket if you apply this same strategy selection method to each part of the sales process.
To learn more about how to easily train salespeople to select the right close in every situation, request a free demonstration of the 7MTF System and Training by clicking the following request button.
