Sales Closing

     Information in this article is being gathered by me when I first joined sales.

My biggest query being why most management books never explains the sales closing techniques I have always heard my Profs. saying it is an instinct there is never a right time you can learn about sales closing.

So after reading few articles I gathered few sales closing techniques.

Different types of sales closing:

1.Puppy dog close-

Imagine standing in a pet shop, tempted to buy that cute little puppy. Now imagine how that desire would be enhanced twenty fold, if the puppy were put into your arms. That is exactly what the sales person does when they put the product in your hand. We all experienced while travelling the street vendor tries to sell the products before that they put the product in our hand, even if you go to a supermarket the new salespeople giving free cakes or biscuits actually does half of their sale once we have it.

2. Demonstration: Demonstrate product in front of them. Infomercials are a multi-billion dollars a year industry. Sometimes words don’t do something justice. Let the product sell itself. You will most likely use another one of the closes listed as you demonstrate.

3.Discount: Reduce price by taking off a percentage. I personally hate 10% off. It is so cliché. Do something better than that if you can. “I want to work together with you , so let me knock off 15% on your first two orders. We can start saving you money, which adds to your bottom line. Does saving money sound good to you?”

4.The Assumptive close-In sales we need to act a lot; this is where you act as though the other person has already made the decision. It moves the conversation towards the next level of questions.  Understanding their requirements and planning it for future and how fixing next meeting. The good part of this technique is sales person doesn't allow the customer to think they want or not want so the success of sales closing is more. " In my personal experience". It might happen the customer might get offended at times too or they just want to bluff around.

5.Concession: Give in to some demand in exchange for the “yes”. “I will make sure you always get free shipping for every order over $500 just like you requested. Let’s get the first order submitted for you now. Will that work for you?”

High level of self-confidence and self-esteem along with your personality accomplishes half of your work in sales.

6.Multiple Choice: Give several choices for them to choose from. Once they tell you which one…you made the sale.

7.The Take Away Close-

You’re on the verge of closing the deal, but your customer is reluctant to proceed. 

Using the Take Away closing technique, you can offer to withdraw the whole deal from the prospect in order to push them to accept the offer. This technique can be used for prospects who happen to be a time-sink and take up a lot of your time – with little to show by way of progress.

The reason why it’s effective is that letting go of a potential client shows how confident you’re in your product, which then gets the prospect to reconsider about the good product that he/she may be missing out on.

Mostly it is the last thing a sales person do to know the interest of the customer or to close the sale within a certain time. 

8.Design: Special and/or unique design. This should be used if your product is truly different than anything else.

9.The Now or Never Close

This technique is best used when the prospect is on the line about buying your product. Similar to the Take Away Close technique, a sense of urgency comes into play and the fear of missing out on a discount nudges the prospect over the proverbial line to get your product.

10.Used Car Salesman: This doesn't have to be negative. Go to bat for your prospect. If you truly are trying to work something out for your prospect you may not have the authority to make the deal you want to give. “Let me talk to the manager and see if I can get the special pricing extended for six months. If he says yes, do we have a deal?” 

11.The Summary Close

Summary close works great when you have gone through an extensive discussion/ evaluation over a period of time and it is now time to switch gears.  Just a simple act of selectively summarizing the highlights and the pointing towards the only logical conclusion that emanates from connecting the dots.

12.Suggestive: Tell them what you suggest they do. You are the "doctor". You listened to them and can see what they really need. Use this especially if the prospect does not give you a specific commitment or quantity. 

13.Something For Nothing Close

 You give your prospect a free add-on or an extra feature in goodwill and they will be obligated to do something in return – that something, in this case, can be buying the product.

Something for Nothing works because people like free things. But just to keep things clear, the freebie you give should be of value to them and less value to you. 

Humans tend to return good deeds.

14.The “I’ll think it over” close.

Potential clients all seem to use the same procrastinating phrases: “I’ll think it over;” “We want to sleep on it;” “Why don’t you come back tomorrow/Next week/After the holidays and we’ll let you know.” But will they think it over? Of course not. 

As soon as you leave the scene they’ll forget it. It’s a brush off...a stall...a way of getting the opportunity to shop around some more and put of making a decision for another day. Asking repeated question and made them agreeing to the facilities of your product, at last the hit comes with money which they obviously think upon making it more considerate thinking.

 15.The sharp angle close:

Instead of just answering a question with a question, as in the standard porcupine, you answer with a sharp-angled question. If they reply in the way their original question suggests they will, they’ve bought it.

16.Tug on the Heart: How does it make them feel? Safe, secure, happy etc. "It is a good feeling to know you are making the right decision for your children isn't it?" 

17.Prospect: “If we decided to go with your product, we’d have to take delivery by June 13th. Could you handle that?” 

18.Champion: “If I could guarantee delivery by June 13th, are you prepared to approve the paperwork today? The Champion will, of course, now shut up until the client answers. Now the feeling the client has is that they can only get guaranteed delivery by the 13th if they place their order now. The salesperson didn’t say that was the case, but the sharp angle close allows you to imply urgency.

19.The Objection Close

Once you have made sure that your prospect has understood everything about your product and what it has to offer, try closing the deal by asking them for any objections they might have with the product.

This approach allows the prospect to raise any final objections or doubts that they need to clear up without saying no to the deal.

20.Pass the Buck: Let the other person with you do the close. Again this will be a case where you will use one or several of the other closes listed, but you realize that the other salesman, manager or owner who is with you can close this sale better than you at that moment. “ John has been with our company for 25 years and I think he can answer your questions a little better.”

21.Losing Money: They will lose money or profitability by not buying. “ I have just shown you, if you don't switch to our ABC service you will be losing money from your bottom line. Let me help you increase your profitability. Can we get this started for you next week ?”

22.Yes-Yes-Yes: Ask questions throughout the presentation where “yes” is the only answer. These are called “mini-closes” that you do along the way of your presentation. When you get to the end they agreed with you on many things you mentioned. It will be easier to close them and lessen objections this way. Ex: “Do you see how this can benefit you? Won't it be nice to know your safe with this widget? You do want your family to have the benefit of this widget don't you?” 

But, after being in sales for an year, I realized we cannot determine any specific type to perform at a time and neither sales is scripted. It is a practice or a skill that makes you successful, and always the instinct that works.

Emotional Intelligence- The Inner Game of Success

                                                 Chapter -1

While, the world is running behind Artificial Intelligence as usual choosing an offtrack I choose to study about Emotional Intelligence.

“ There are hidden messages in every emotion. When we identify them we work upon them and we become emotionally intelligent.”

There are no true success without emotional success. There are more that three thousand emotions that we have words to describe. The average person experiences a dozen emotions in a week. Though, it doesn't reflect our emotional capacity but rather the limitations of present patterns of focus.

There are 3000 words in English thesaurus that describes emotion in that 1051 words describe emotions while 2086 almost twice as that describes negative emotions. There are so many words describe unpleasant emotions what it means that we are so focused seeing unpleasant side of life rather than seeing the happy version of your life.

One key problem with most people is that can't name their emotion or express their emotion, this is the place you need to become emotionally intelligent and emotionally aware of the feeling you are experiencing.

WHAT YOU ARE FEELING? WHY YOU ARE FEELING? HOW YOU ARE FEELINGS AFFECTING OTHERS AROUND YOU?

MASTER YOURSELF!

Mastering yourself is really important know what it is that is keeping you stuff? What limits you? And What triggers you?

Why do you take things personally?

While improving your emotional intelligence you become less reactive and more interactive in your conversations.

The effective way to understand your emotions is to understand how they all serve you.

Learn from your emotions and user them to create the result you want.

                                           

                                                                                                                               -Debopriya Gupta

Fear!

                                                                       

Is fear an emotion or a felling? 

Fear as conscious and fear as unconscious as well as fear with bodily reactions and fear without bodily reactions and fear in anxiety and fear in phobias.

Fear reaction starts in the brain and spreads through the body to make adjustments for the best defense, or flight reaction. 

For an example you want to make a step ahead in your life but you can't do it did you ask yourself why in-spite of everything what is that holding you back?

Is your courage enough to overcome your fear or your just making reasons to hide your fear from outside world?

What are you feared of ? Yourself? Your Life or the society you are staying or external yardstick money, fame or power. What is that stops you from not making a decision to go ahead in life.

                                                      "Fight or flight ?"

Do your remember the last time when you have enjoyed your holiday by not fearing about your job, work or even school homework.

The truth is we lack the truth of living in this moment and deal with it.

We all  love to dream but we are good at escaping from our dreams in the name of excuses.

An unknown fear of being judged by your success is just an hallucination. 

We think, we dream, we freeze, we don't show the courage to move a step ahead to fulfill it we love to hide it in the name of dream rather showing guts to make it reality.

Listen, to your intuition, to the unheard voice it might lead to failure but at least we will not regret whole life for not doing it. 

             "Failure is better than regret"

You are special!

Yes, I am special, special to myself, Is what I do when I wake up every day.

“How I feel about myself is more important than how I look.”

Somewhere, Indian parents never had a habit to tell their child “ you are special “ or rather we are happy in whatever you are doing. It mostly ends up comparing the child either with their sibling or to the other peers of their age or above. Maybe, its good to set a benchmark but if constantly keep expressing their displeasure or unhappiness for their poor performance, it will break and not build their self- confidence.

“Believe in yourself a little more.”

We majorly lack in expressing our thought process, rather we find it difficult to find anyone around us to express it which slowly leads us to be silent. Not to treated as accessories as an object to show off in social circles. By setting unrealistic goals, they tend to exploit and bring disappointment for themselves and ruin the lives. Should be treated with respect as independent individuals and need to be loved and understood.

When I was in school I could still remember there was a jealousy, there was a hatred between the classmates which we cannot show to the society. While we were learning moral science in school simultaneously we have also learn to be competitive enough, when we were taught to share our things we were also taught don't share your notes as other may get better marks.

Mostly, parents have always pressurized their student to be better than the others as it makes them proud rather than understanding their children uniqueness.

“There’s no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let others get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections.”

After, all the hassle comes the time to choose Science and commerce where again the parents take the decision of choosing their stream without judging probably what interests their child, because the child is cannot be any less than their sibling or society, not considering the fact the child is no more a child now, none ask their interest or choices.

It always the matter of “comparison” that being heard all throughout, we were never appreciated of our qualities we were always taught to be someone else to be like someone else in life and not like ourselves.

A little personal information, I am being the lower mediocre student was never considered for any competition, it was just like you are good for nothing so there were never peer pressure on me - just go with the flow, I still don't know whether it was a blessing or a boon.

Many, of us face a behavioral problem sometimes as an adult we might think we should go to a psychiatrist but no one considers why it has happened one of the major thing being repeated comparison and insecurity which we cannot admit but somewhere we eternally know which tends to distance us from others.

Suppression of our thoughts, suppression of our talents may eventually lose everything which we might be good at. We blame time but is it really the time did anyone ever tried to know what we are interested into what we like to do or we have dumped it over the years?

Every one is different, so we should value them for who they are created to be. Words have a powerful way of shaping our self-image, therefore words used positively can be a miracle tool. Rather than pointing out what they do not have, make the effort to compliment them on their positive traits, like their kindness, determination or creativity.

                                                      

Stress & Conflict:

A phase where we are into colleges probably a little more conscious with our career, a crush on someone or a newly found love.

Love is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful feelings in the world. Ideally speaking, it is involuntary, gratifying, and rewarding.

As individuals, we often tend to have a basic idea about the kind of partner that we would like to be with. Some wish for a person who is athletic, some want an individual who is intellectually very sound, while some simply desire an understanding and jovial partner. That said, we not only are at least mildly aware of the kind of person we want to romance; once we do find that somebody, we continue to pitch their strengths, and primarily their drawbacks against those around us. In simple words, it is called “comparing your partner”. While it would be great if we appreciated the person we’re with by drawing positive comparisons, what majority of us do is its exact opposite.

There is no limit to the number of factors upon which comparisons can be drawn. The basis on which we compare our partner to another being may vary from person to person. However, some prime factors serving as reasons for comparison have been identified below:

Physical Appearance

Family Background and Socio-Economic Status

Educational Background

Personality Type

Popularity Quotient

Romantic Equation of another Couple

When comparing your partner to someone else’s could be a key source of stress and conflict, which is why it is important that we view our partners and ourselves as one single unit.

In real life many a time we have noticed we generally don't appreciate our partner who in spite of all the hassle makes time for us. Rather, we end up comparing them with others, what we tend to forget is not all people are same neither all have same life style nor working life.

When people walk away from you, let them go.

As much as I would advise self-reflection to those who wish to discover more of themselves, in this case it would mean for you to remember your own flaws and how you are living with them. Nobody is perfect, and so the way we accept and love ourselves, we must do the same when it comes to our partners as well.

We all have certain characteristics that contribute towards our uniqueness, and make us different from those around us. Likewise, every being has their own way of both loving, and showing love.

“In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.”

It's time

It was time, time to go to college with a lot of expectations not only for the future but also to start a new phase of life, first time when you think that you are free now, you are an adult it’s time to experiment all the things that you have always imagined doing, that you have seen around happening but somehow you were in boundaries of restriction that you couldn't try, Its time now.

I guess all of us had that same feeling in mind once we were done with school. 

I could still remember my 1st day of college where I found few too admissions as couples, few were busy texting their friends, seniors banging doors to take introduction and gave us tasks to do, few seniors gave an extra required help to share no.s of girls and telling them they are just a call away. I remember I refused to do a task and my seniors named me "Mamta Banerjee".

I guess like this observing people around us we unknowingly make connections with them which were likely not based on any give and take, nor we demand and have expectations from them it’s just happening.

As, the days passes by many couples where no more couples, heartbreaks happens tears where on eyes but simultaneously new bonding are starting the new way of supporting each other we were discovering, different ways to bunk classes and escaping from college, kids are no more kids they started exploring things a first day “try is a habit now.” 

Few named it as a part of betrayal and few to gain more concentration in studies, there is something my best friend told me who was a part of it " You never start these stuffs for others or for betrayals, you start it because you always wanted to do. It, betrayal was just an excuse to give a reason to the world!” . Somehow, those words touched my heart and could never forget.

Those 4 years of college was a time when many new people peeped into our life, some added value to it, some managed to gain trust and break it simultaneously, some people never promised us anything but silently was there all throughout the time like a pillar never demanding anything nor complaining.

A silent feature at college was you were never alone it was someone or the other to hold your hand and say "It’s ok! I am there."

Slowly, we were all placed now we all got a job and out of college we retained few friends, few couples were no more couples now, although few are trying their best to survive, manage time for family and their partner, few were not placed the frustration of seeing friends getting placed with a job and handsome salary is killing them.

But, it was time, time to be apart if not mentally but physically for sure in different cities, in different countries, far from family, its time when society expects you to be responsible, it’s time to enter a new phase of life.

Some decisions were emotional, somewhere required. 

We are alone now we don't know anyone in the city neither our family is nor with us. Every day, new survival strategy need to be found out, in that mean while we are losing our contacts of our dearer ones, time is lacking we cannot be on the phone for hours, struggling to adjust in the new environment, we are bursting with emotions but we don't have enough people to share them or rather to understand the state of mind. It was hilarious once it was a time when two friends used to have a lot of gossips and laughter now it’s changed to the competition of telling who has more difficulties in life, an unknown race we are running but we never want to win. Office politics is a part of life, and survival strategies are the only thing we plan on weekend sitting on a PG with a bed too small to sleep. 

It was hard to imagine now what the hobbies are or rather what we are good at all our skills have gone for toss. Rather, it just “we don't have time."

It’s the time we realize and remember how small things matters how our room unknowingly became the dream place to take a peace nap, those small memories on the lanes of your city.

It’s the time we are fuzzed up in our mind we pretend to be happy, half of the time we are sad, we pretend to dwell happily in all decisions, we look for a support but we are scared of betrayal.

It's time now wrap up the old thoughts, old feelings, grudges it’s not easy, though, but we can all try rather than swirling within old memories.

Somehow we have all lost ourselves with time, changed with time, maybe an unknown demand it was. But, it's time again, time to live our life the way we wanted not what society wants us to do.

Mental Peace is what we are looking for!

We remember the lesson learnt and start living the life the way you wanted.

The Campaign That Changed The Game

                                     
                                                                Part-1

This blog is mostly a review of a book "The Modi Effect- Inside Narendra Modi's Camapaign To Transform India" - By Lance Price and few articles read on different articles.

On May 16, 2014 history of India took a new turn Narendra Modi was declared the winner of the largest democratic nation ever conducted in human history. But, many of us have that question in mind how this magic happened in such a short time.

On an interview with BBC correspondent and political vet Lance Price was granted exclusive access to write about this book which details message management and technological wizardry combined to create a vote winning colossus.

If you have ever observe on one of the Modi's campaign he claimed in his speech that he has an 56 inch chest ," 56 inches is very cleverly crafted tool to develop Modi's Alpha male image". Which also signifies that as soon as a  person  sees him there will be already in mind that he is physically commanding.

Mostly, speeches of  Indian politician used to be lengthy text, written by others covering all the issues confronting by government the major fallback of this used to people couldn't relate them in their personal life  it never used to pierce through the AAM ADMI's heart.

When Modi came to the picture his address straight touched people's heart, he has handful of notes  with him, though there was a little diversion of the topic in all his speeches where all spoke about India's greatness he spoke about its shame. The nation can send a mission to Mars but couldn't provide toilets. Poverty and filthy streets disfigured the country where it one of the most advanced nation in IT. He also spoke about degradation of women. After hour long mould-breaker speech he addressed the audience as an "I am an outsider" " quite isolated from the elite class of this place" which was an ice-breaker for all. Here, the ice being the hierarchy of Indian politicians " the elite class" where as in India most of our population is struggling from poverty Modi addressed him as he is from one among the public. Which, also signifies that he can better understand the need of the people and help them out in their way. 

Claiming outsider status is a familiar gambit among politics. It is effective in places where disillusionment with status quo is particularly intense. India in 2014 was in such place. Though nobody walks straight through an outsider corridor but they can absolutely pretend too!

On the day of results Modi had the best answer to all his critics public knows it all nonetheless that he was the man to take the nation forward.

Modi's campaign was partially taken from West but it is Indianised for us to reach all the corners of India.  Its use of innovative technology and social media with the capacity of galvanizing young people  uninterested and disillusioned Modis's campaign took the game over. A very high turnout among young , first time  voters was a notable feature .

The campaign hit the right people in right time.

As a marketing student I can tell Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Process and Physical Evidence all hit well!