When sales calls end in rejection, most coaches blindly push forward or overhaul their entire sales process, but there’s a better way. Here are 5 simple keys based on the proven methods of world-class athletes and sales legends that can boost your conversion rates by 20-30%.
Did you know that sales are almost never lost at end of sales meetings?
Most coaches don’t understand this, though. They put all their attention into the close and ignore the beginning. They think if they can only deliver the perfect pitch to the prospect at the end of the appointment, they’ll win them over.
It’s almost as if they’re presenting closing arguments in a courtroom to persuade a jury.
How twisted is that?
When a prospect hires you, what are they buying? Your product? Your program?
Sure, but only to a degree. When a prospect hires you, they’re really buying certainty.
Ultimately, certainty is a combination of clarity and confidence.
When a sales appointment doesn’t end in making a sale, it’s usually because the prospect doesn’t feel certain about you or your coaching program.
When a sales appointment doesn’t end with conversion, most coaches think there was a problem with the way they closed. They believe they must have done something wrong at the end or they’d have a new client.
The thing is, sales are almost never lost at the close — they’re lost at the very beginning.
On the last post, we introduced how important the first three to five minutes of a sales appointment are to making a sale at the end.
When a one-on-one sales appointment ends in rejection, it can be really frustrating. It’s completely natural to think back over the entire appointment to try and figure out where it went off the rails.
Did I say something wrong or offensive?
Did I appear too pushy at the close?
Was I too passive?
Most coaches replay the appointment in their minds and truly believe the sale must have been lost somewhere at the close — after all,
This is an extra long 4,000+ word guide to creating a system that converts prospects to high-end clients. I’ll be releasing it in several parts, so be sure to bookmark this page now because you’ll want to come back later.
Over the last several posts, we’ve been looking at a concept I call stretching the gap. This is so crucial to the sales process that skipping it usually results in you pushing your program too hard on a prospect who’s just not that interested.
They end up making excuses why they can’t buy, and you end up wasting your time and missing out on a sale.
Obviously, that’s not what we’re after.
Lots of sales processes are pain-focused. You dig for the pain, find the pain, and use the pain to sell your program. These processes can be great and they have merit, but it’s even more powerful to start with a vision of the end result and contrast it with their current reality.
I call this process of contrasting stretching the gap. In the last post, we talked about the first step: painting the picture. This is when we help our prospects get really clear about where they want to go.
To get our prospects eager to buy from us, we need to stretch the gap between their desired result and their current reality. What exactly does that mean?
Stretching the gap involves three main steps. We need to identify:
So, the first step is to get them really clear about where they want to go.
Your marketing is starting to pay off, and what was once a prospect is now a solid lead. Before you know it, you’re in the sales meeting, pitching your coaching program.
There are hundreds of strategies out there that claim to “guarantee the sale,” but I’ve found there’s one strategy that stands out above the rest.
I call it stretching the gap, and I believe it’s an absolutely essential part of the sales process.