Most salespeople are very competitive. We want to win. In fact, we want to win every time. It’s just that this is not very practical. If we made a sale every single time we made a presentation, we’d lose our edge, and we would be so swamped with work that we’d have trouble scheduling all of it.
So, while our initial answer to the question of how’d we like to close the sale every time you met with a potential client or customer might be a resounding “yes,” we need think about what this might mean. While it may sound good to our competitive nature, it’s a case of not so fast.
Actually closing each presentation with a sale means that each time someone comes into our showroom and we meet with them, or each time that we go to someone’s home and discuss renovation options with them, that we get an actual deposit and agreement.
While we might be able to do this from a skill and technique level, and certainly from a pure desire level, we really don’t want to make a sale to every single customer you meet.
Unless we dramatically changed our delivery system and went out and hired more employees or made arrangements with more subcontractors and strategic partners than we have right now, if we literally sold a job to every customer we met with and discussed solutions for them, we’d be so busy doing all of the estimates, finishing the paperwork, scheduling the jobs, getting them started, and monitoring them that we’d have little time for generating new business or setting and keeping more appointments. Then, there’s the reality of not having enough crews, materials, or hours in the day to get everything done that had been sold.
Of course, we really don’t need to worry about making a sale to each person we meet because not everyone will like what you offer, the solutions we suggest, our approach to their issues, or our price. If it’s an elective remodel where it’s not being done to address a specific physical issue or need of a member of the family, they may just enjoy looking at ideas and possibilities without ever buying anything – from us or anyone else.
In a more practical sense, there are some customers who present too many challenges in terms of what they need to be done, their limited budget, their demands on how the job needs to be done to meet their standards, and the physical constraints of their home in doing the improvements, that the process would not be pleasant, enjoyable, or especially rewarding.
In some cases, customers could be so difficult to work with that we would eventually give them back their deposit and cancel the sale (if we hadn’t started any demolition or material removal yet). When that isn’t possible, we will find ourselves on a continual quest to satisfy all of their demands for perfection in their remodeling project – both during construction and after delivery.
So as enticing as it sounds to be able to make a sale with every customer, be wary of those who shouldn’t be your customers and let them buy from someone else.
Set our sights on making a sale to most of those who like what you offer and like the way we do business. That will still keep us extremely busy and profitable.