5 Steps to Closing the Sale Faster [Don’t Let It Slip Through the Cracks!]

When a seemingly good sales situation seems to slow down for no apparent reason, it can feel like a sticky gravitational pull that can’t be stopped.

And in some cases, the sale entirely slips through the cracks once momentum is lost.

This is one of the most common sales challenges I hear about. Salespeople frequently ask me, “How can I close my sales more quickly?”

The most important part of the answer is that much of what happens at the end of the sale actually started at the beginning.
In this video, I’m going to show you 5 steps to closing the sale faster…so it doesn’t slip through the cracks. Check it out:

 

Our good friends at Pipedrive have a solution that shows you exactly how to keep your pipeline organized and on track. Use this link to get a 30-day free trial of Pipedrive, and 20% off any services from them in the first year.

1. Organize your entire process.

Every professional salesperson, and every sales organization as a whole, must have a good CRM system in place to organize everything. The last thing you want to do is just have your entire sales process organized in some Excel spreadsheets, on paper, or in Google Docs.

You don’t ever want to walk into the office wondering what your day will look like. Your process should be so organized that you already know exactly what each day is going to entail. There must be a particular system through which you can see your entire pipeline, so that way nothing is ever slipping through the cracks.

Our good friends at Pipedrive have a solution that shows you exactly how to keep your pipeline organized and on track. Click right here to get a 30-day free trial of Pipedrive, plus 20% off any services from them in the first year. This is an amazing discount. It’s also a great opportunity to start to organize your process.

Whatever system you choose, you want to be able to map out each phase of the sale so that each contact, and each organization, is clearly visible exactly where it is in your pipeline.

The more organized your process, the better off you’ll be. Having a good CRM system that really holds it all together is simply key to closing the sale faster.

2. Disqualify prospects.

This is less about organization and more about how you’re actually selling. One of the reasons many sales start to slow down is that they were never truly qualified in the first place. You must become adept at using a systematic process to understand whether each prospect is actually qualified or disqualified. This is essential to closing the sale faster, because otherwise you’ll spend all of your time with disqualified prospects that have just kind of hung around in your pipeline. You’ve got to clean those people out, and move on.

By learning to disqualify prospects early on, you’ll enable yourself to focus your time and energy on prospects that are actually a good fit.

Disqualifying prospects means that you must be willing to move on from opportunities that may have seemed optimistic at first. By asking strong questions, you’ll be able to determine that even a prospect who looks ideal on paper may not be a fit right now after all.

3. Present only what’s relevant.

Salespeople constantly want to present their entire offering to every single prospect. But the reality is that you probably have an offering that’s pretty broad. And so your prospects often don’t need everything that you do. They only need certain things.

Presenting features or components of your offering that are outside the scope of what the prospect is really trying to solve only distracts them—and slows down the sale.

If you really want to close the sale faster, you must present only what’s relevant.

Just imagine that you’re buying a minivan for your family and the salesperson says, “This minivan actually has 320 horsepower…” and goes on to explain this feature for a while. The whole time, you’re probably thinking, “What do I care about horsepower? I just want a minivan to get my family around town, and to and from school.” So now the salesperson has pulled the sale off track.

Of course, we’re not all selling cars—most of us aren’t. But the idea here is that you want to make sure you’re only presenting what is truly relevant to solving your prospects’ challenges.

4. Be NSO.

NSO stands for Next Step Obsessed. One of the most common reasons sales start to slow down is a lack of clear next steps. If you really want to start closing the sale faster, then you need to become absolutely obsessed with next step. As in, you can’t sleep at night if you know that you didn’t schedule a next step in that last meeting.

Once you prioritize next steps and become militant about scheduling them in every meeting or sales conversation, you’ll noticed that you’re able to hold sales together far more effectively.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in sales is to give a proposal to a prospect and then plan to “reconnect in a couple of months” or something similarly vague. Instead, there should always be a scheduled appointment in the calendar. Become obsessed with asking every prospect, “Do you have your calendar in front of you?” before ending any sales conversation. (And by the way, everyone has their calendar in front of them nowadays.)

Always get that next step in the calendar right then and there, and send out a calendar invite while you’re actually on the phone or on the Zoom or for face to face with the prospect. Always be obsessed with next steps.

That’s going to hold the sale together. And it’s going to condense your sales cycle, so you can start closing the sale faster.

5. Live by your pipeline.

The next step to closing the sale faster is to become crystal clear—and truly honest—about your pipeline’s strongest opportunities, and where you need to focus your time. Living by your pipeline and only focusing on the very best opportunities means condensing that sales cycle and closing the sale faster. And, quite frankly, more frequently.

This is important stuff. To get started living by your pipeline, I want to encourage you again to check out Pipedrive. Use this link to get a 30-day free trial of Pipedrive, and 20% off any services from them in the first year. Be sure to just click right here to get your free trial and 20% off.

So there you have it. Now you know 5 steps to closing the sale faster. Which of these strategies did you find most useful for speeding up your sales cycle? Be sure to share below in the comment section to get involved in the conversation.