Closing and the Circle of Fear

We always try to talk to or interview individual sales people before we deliver in house sales training. As part of this discussion the salesperson is asked about the areas of their selling that they feel they need help with. At this stage we must have talked to nearly one thousand salespeople and one word that we hear time after time is the “close”. Closing is an issue for most of us, me included, why? Later this year I will discuss ways to be a better closer but first lets look at some the psychological issues.

The act of closing forces us to risk failing or being rejected. We don’t like to fail or have to deal with rejection because it hurts. Traditional sales training teaches that this rejection is not personal but that’s not how we feel deep down so we prefer to avoid closing altogether or we only choose to close when we are very confident of the prospect’s saying yes. Salespeople need to close to get their prospects to say “yes” but salespeople don’t close because they fear prospects saying “no”

Now let’s consider the psychology of the prospect. We know as people that we don’t like being rejected because it makes us feel bad. This conscious makes it difficult for us to reject others so the prospect too avoids the close because they might end up saying “no”. So now we know that both the salesperson and the prospect may avoid the close because the both fear having to deal with “no”

The sales environment too serves to magnify this fear of “no”. We fear our failures happening in front of our peers and manager and prefer to talk about lots of maybes. I personally remember that one of the more difficult parts of being a seller was telling my manager that a deal had fell through. Salespeople try to avoid this discussion because it requires them to risk disappointing their manager.

When you consider the above it is easy to see why closing is such a huge problem for so many salespeople and why the “its not personal approach” rarely works. Selling means asking for “yes” but risking hearing “no”. When we hear “no” we feel bad so we avoid asking.

It is easy to reason that this rejection is not personal but it is extremely difficult to not feel this rejection personally. The very first step in learning how to be a great closer is accepting these feelings and understanding that they are OK.