5 Steps to Improve Your Close Rate

Ever wondered how your close rate compares to others in your industry? No need to wonder anymore. My good friends at HubSpot recently released some incredibly data from their HubSpot CRM users.

HubSpot compared the close rates of 28 different industries—and now I’m sharing the results with you so you can start to see how you compare to your competitors.

Here’s what HubSpot found: Industries such as arts and entertainment, business and industrial, internet and telecom, and autos, vehicles, and government were all in the mid-to-upper 20% close rates. This means that people in these industries were closing just about a quarter of all their opportunities. On the bottom end of the close rates were industries like biotech, insurance, event services, hospitality, and marketing. Their close rates were closer to 15%, and some were as low as 11%. That’s a huge difference between people at the top and bottom ends of the spectrum, isn’t it?!

In this video, I’m going to show you how to get your close rate higher with just a few key steps—no matter where your industry falls on HubSpot’s chart. Check it out.

Close More Sales Video Summary:

1. Stop pitching your offering up front.

Most salespeople make the mistake of thinking their prospects care about what they’re trying to sell. In reality, prospects don’t care at all about your offering.

Today, 95% of your competitors are out there pitching their products and services like amateurs. It’s time to distinguish yourself from your competitors. Instead of focusing on your offering up front, focus all of your attention on your prospects.

Focusing on their challenges and their key objectives. They’ll be far more likely to do business with you when you aren’t being salesy like everyone else. And most important, you’ll learn to fully understand your prospect.

2. Learn about their most pressing challenges.

Like I said before, prospects don’t care about your offering. They just don’t. Prospects care about solving the problems that your offering solves. That’s it.

It’s time to start focusing on learning as much as you can about the challenges that your prospect is facing. Really dig into those challen

ges through good, high-quality questions. Understand what those challenges are costing your prospect. This is going to create far more value in the sales process and ultimately help the prospect justify making an investment in you.

3. Understand their key objectives.

This is the other side of the coin to understanding challenges. Once you’re clear on challenges, it’s time to understand what your prospects are really looking to accomplish.

Get specific on exactly what their top three priorities are. This is going to give you tremendous insight into whether the prospect is really qualified, and what kind of an offering you should present.

Plus, your prospects will feel like you really understand them at the end of this process.

4. Determine the value of achieving those objectives.

Now that you understand their objectives, it’s time to get a little bit of math out there. I know a lot of salespeople don’t see themselves as real math people, but this is so important.

So, ask a question like, “What would accomplishing these objectives mean in dollars?” (Or profit, or revenues, depending on your world.)

If you can get your prospects to articulate specific numbers about what accomplishing those objectives means, then you’re going to make your price seem really minor in comparison to what they stand to gain.

This is the art of creating real value in the eyes of your prospect.

5. Get all the decision makers involved.

This is noticeably different from the first four points I made. And there’s a reason for that. In the first four steps, we focused ultimately on creating value. But you know what? If you aren’t creating value in the eyes of the right people, then it’s all wasted effort.

You need to be sure that you’re meeting all of those key decision makers. As soon as you hear your prospect say, “Well, I need to run this by so and so,” you’re in trouble. We need to avoid that.

Be sure to establish early on who’s involved in every decision-making process.

So there you have it. Now you know the 5 steps to improve your close rate. I want to hear from you. Which of these steps are you most excited to implement? Be sure to share below in the comments section and join the conversation. For more information on your close rate, go to HubSpot’s cool tool on comparing your close rate to your industry by clicking here.