ASK FOR THE F*CKING SALE! (Stop Losing Deals)

:: 00:00:00

Speaker 1

What? Enough! He didn't ask for the sale. It blows my mind. Hey. What's up? I'm Ray green, former executive turned nomad entrepreneur. I've turned around eight sales teams in my career. I was managing director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for a decade. So I oversaw national small and mid-sized business. And that meant field sales, phone sales, direct mail sales, digital sales, you name it.

:: 00:26:09

Speaker 1

I've led sales turnarounds for investor groups, and for the past five years I have coached and consulted hundreds of B2B businesses, like 18 businesses to help them grow sales, grow revenue, and scale their company. And I was recently listening to a sales call for one of my clients to give some feedback on the proposals. So up to this point, they've, you know, done some qualifying, done a discovery, they've even done a network assessment.

:: 00:47:28

Speaker 1

And they're at the proposal phase. The salesperson is has the deals going through the slides and does a pretty good job. Like actually, you know, going through presenting the information, you know, in terms of professionalism, almost everything was there. And we get to the end and I'm anxiously waiting for the for the end here he presents the plan and the price.

:: 01:09:06

Speaker 1

And then he says, I'm sure you want to think about this. So when do you want to follow up? What? Enough. He didn't ask for the sale. It blows my mind. I mean, you've worked so hard to get to this point. Like the number of leads that have to be gone through and called on and sent marketing information and then get qualified and then get to discovery and have a problem, have a pain point, actually have a real opportunity, and then go through and do assessments and then create the proposal.

:: 01:42:12

Speaker 1

Then you bring the proposal, you go through all the information and the point at which you begin selling when you ask for money. He bailed. He bailed on the complete opportunity. Like if you were in sales. That's your moment. Sales is helping people make decisions. Presumably your service can help them solve a problem. If that's the case, you have an obligation to sell properly to help them make the right decision so that you can alleviate the pain or eliminate the problem that they currently have.

:: 02:12:12

Speaker 1

And when you don't even ask, it's an abdication of the core responsibility of sales. You're avoiding the entire decision making process, the process that you want to be present for, the process that you want to help them walk through, the process that they need your help to work through. If again, your services help them solve a problem, then your job is to help them make the right decision.

:: 02:35:01

Speaker 1

And when you don't, when you say, hey, let's just follow up. Like what you're doing is you're one pushing that process back to them. Like I've presented information like I'm just I'm just somebody that presents information I don't like really help when it comes to like making the decisions. That's not I'm not going to lead you through that process.

:: 02:50:05

Speaker 1

You know, if you have questions, I don't want to be there to answer those. If you have concerns, I don't want to be there to address those. If you're looking at a competitor and perhaps confused about which one's better, I don't want to be there. That's not what you want to do as a sales professional. What you want to do is you want to invite that process to happen with your support.

:: 03:08:14

Speaker 1

Because if they think that the price is too expensive, would you not rather address that? Do you not want to have the opportunity to demonstrate some of the value? To put that in proper context, if they have reservations about buying, like maybe the onboarding is going to be an asset, maybe this is going to take longer than I think, and the cost of switching is going to be more significant.

:: 03:25:15

Speaker 1

I as a salesperson, I want to have that conversation with them. I don't want them to have it by themselves, because it may not even be made with accurate information. If they're confused about anything, you know, with IT services, there's a lot of stuff that's happening. People don't know how to buy IT service. It's like you do that.

:: 03:39:11

Speaker 1

How many times in your career, if they're confused about something, you want to be there to clarify. You want to be there to offer them the information that they need to make that good decision. And if they're shopping services and they think that, hey, you know, the competitor seems a little bit better and maybe it's not, but you're not going to have the opportunity to clarify that when you say, I'm sure you want to think this over without me, right?

:: 03:58:29

Speaker 1

Like, no, because I can't answer any of these questions. I can't help you make the good decision. So when would you like to follow up? This is exactly how deals get caught up in your pipeline. This is exactly how you end up getting ghosted. This is exactly why you can't get actual decisions from people. This is why your conversions are so low.

:: 04:13:24

Speaker 1

And this is why the cost of acquisition is so high. Because there are missed opportunities to sitting out there, lingering as a result of poor process. And listen. Asking for money is not that hard. If you've gone through this entire process, especially in consultative sales, you should have rapport at this point. You should have some trust at this point.

:: 04:32:14

Speaker 1

If you don't, you've lost the deal anyway. So you get to that point and you say, let's say you've got two plans, right? You present two plans. Hey, Joe. Like so I put together two plans based on everything that we talked about in our last meeting. I really recommend that you go with plan A because of XYZ. Do you disagree?

:: 04:48:27

Speaker 1

All right. Like, let's get the decision making process going right. Simple question just to get that dialog going or something like hey, you know, when we first talked these were the primary issues that you were dealing with. I feel like in the proposal we really addressed that here with this and this and this. Would you be comfortable with me drafting up an agreement for your review?

:: 05:06:08

Speaker 1

You got to invite that conversation to be had with you, not when you leave. Not by themselves, not through email. That is your time to shine. So I implore you, I beg you, if you're selling stuff, quit wasting opportunities. Ask for the deal, invite the tough conversations, and give yourself a fighting chance of actually addressing the objections that are never going to come back.

:: 05:29:14

Speaker 1

Because you said I would just follow up like, so you guys just make that decision without me. Bad for your paycheck. Bad for the business economics. No good for anyone. Not even good for the client. Because again, if you can help them solve a problem, then you have now done them a disservice by not running a good process.

:: 05:45:23

Speaker 1

So ask yourself, please ask for the sale. If this has been helpful, go ahead and subscribe to the channel for more business and sales tips. Adios!