Selling Software: Closing The Deal - Introduction To Face-to-face Selling Of Software

In B2B situations, selling software face-to-face can get complicated

. Having a good sales process can improve your results and lower your stress, allowing you to perform in a more natural, powerful way. This article focuses on how to go about closing the deal after you have discovered the necessary information from the prospect.

For complex sales, such as with software, probably the dumbest advice you could ever follow is the popular mantra, "Always Be Closing." Closing the deal in software sales is an art, requiring finesse and patience, but there's a clear process you can follow. In Part 1 ("Selling Software: Introduction to face-to-face selling of software - Set up and Discovery") the process of discovering information about your prospect was reviewed. Here in Part 2 we're going to take that information and use it in a structured way to do another discovery: how to close the deal. We want the prospect to tell us how to close the deal.

In part 1 you should have discovered who all the decision makers are. To close the deal you want to get them all together in the same meeting. To prepare for the meeting you should have developed very clear ideas of how your software addresses each of their problems. You should be thoroughly prepared to give quick, laser-like demonstrations of those features. The structure of the meeting is as follows:

Recap - Describe what you have discovered. Review the pain points , why they are pain points, what the impact is on the business in terms of unnecessary costs, lost revenue opportunities, customer service problems, etc. Discuss personal pain points for individuals in terms of overtime, stress, turnover and so on. Describe what has been done in the past to fix these problems. Recap what you have learned about the budget they have allocated to fix the problem. Describe what you have been told about their decision making process. As you go through the recap, keep getting consent that you have the complete and accurate story. If not, get all the additional information you can. (This will require that you get into "think on your feet" mode.)

The Demo - Finally! But, do not do your normal canned demo. As stated earlier, you should know by now how your software addresses each of their pain points. Start the demo by asking them which problem they would first like to address. And get this idea firmly in your mind: you are neither selling software nor doing a demo of software. You are selling solutions and doing a demo of solutions.

Find out which problem they first want to examine. Don't respond to this by going into a long explanation of how your software is structured and all its features and so on, do this: go right to the killer screen or report that totally, visibly nails the problem. Don't explain how you got there, just go there and show them right before their eyes the screen or report that buries that problem once and for all. They may wonder, and ask, how you got there.

At this point you offer them a choice - do they want to dig a little deeper into how you got there, or do they want see how you solve the next problem. You can go either way - what you are doing is involving them in the demo and learning more about how they think.

The Close - After you have reviewed your solutions and satisfied their questions, it's time for the close. But you're not going to close, they're going to close. You ask the question, "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to sign up with us and get started?"

If they say 0-5, go negative reverse - you say, "maybe you're just not really interested?" Or, "maybe you're right - maybe we're not a good fit for you." Sometimes they'll turn around and tell you why they are a good fit!

If they say 5-7 - you say, "let's look a little more in depth - what do we need to do to move that up to a 10?"

If they say 8-9, you say, "what do we need to do to move that up to a 10?"

If they say 10 - you say, "Great! What would you like me to do now?" Help them if they don't know! (You would prepare a contract and get their signature and set some start dates.)

In conclusion, I think you can see that almost the entire sales process is about discovering what's in your prospect's mind. Sometimes they are too anxious or hurried to want to give you the information you need, but that is where you have to earn your money: make them tell you how to close the deal.

by: Steve Kilner

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