The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

You're a closer! It's what you do...close deals.

You know, that sweet moment when the handshake seals the deal, and you walk away knowing you’ve added another win to the board.

But what if I told you that you could boost your closing ratio with just a small tweak to your proposals? It’s not rocket science—just a simple addition that can make a world of difference. I’m talking about adding a section called “Measures of Success.”

We're tackling a crucial aspect of sales that's as important as your morning coffee: sealing more deals.

To close more opportunities, it's critical that we limit or completely remove as many objections during the presentation as possible. One way to do that is to remove the surprises. Surprises are great for a birthday party, but they can be devastating during a business meeting.

By now, you’ve realized that regurgitated sales techniques and tactics aren’t working – including the approach you take with your sales proposal.

You need something more. What you need is a well-crafted document that hits the right tone and authentically convinces your great lead to close the deal. But sometimes, even with a data-focused, detail-driven proposal, that great lead disappears in the abyss, and before you know it, you realize you’ve been ghosted.

Fear not; we’ve brewed up three tactics that will help your sales proposals convert more prospects at a high rate!

Once you present a solution to a prospective buyer or client, two things happen.

It becomes either Close Won or Close Lost. Close Won is obviously the ideal or desired scenario, but what happens when your pending deal is Close Lost? Is ALL lost? Maybe not. 

Ask yourself these three questions to determine if you can change a Close Lost scenario into a Close Won.

Everybody wants to sell faster! No matter your industry or product, every organization is in a hurry to close more business. And on the surface, that sounds like a good idea — but it's not.

Too often, we're in such a hurry to close the sale that we rush and make mistakes in the sales process that actually slows down the act of closing.

In our haste, we tend to overlook certain obstacles in our path in an effort to sell quickly. These obstacles often come up as a surprise to the client, which can derail the conversation and cause us to back-track and overcome the objection, which takes more time than if we had discussed it from the beginning.

"The end depends on the beginning (and everything in between)."

Yes, we have heard this a thousand times, but no truer words have been said when it comes to developing proposals.

I had an epiphany pretty early in my sales career. I had been on a sales call to a restaurant, and they asked for a proposal. I rushed back to my desk so excited with the opportunity to get to present, only to stare at my computer for what seemed like an eternity. Crafting that proposal took a lot longer than it should have.

Later, when looking back, I realized it was because I didn’t have enough information. I had missed the mark on a number of things. Here's a little advice on how not to make the same mistake.

The market's uncertainty has left many companies with an uncomfortable and frustrating bloated feeling in their sales pipeline.

Even before the pandemic, you could have easily convinced me that compensation plans changed radically and that people in sales were getting paid based on pending business. Every time I asked a salesperson how they were doing, I received the same response: "I’ve got a lot pending!”

Pre-pandemic, I reviewed over 500 proposals from various B2B sales organizations over the course of six months. These were all legitimate proposals, actually presented to a prospect or client. Based on those proposals, and the bloated pipeline many of you are experiencing today,  here's some valuable insight on how to close more business.

Having a strategic sales process goes far beyond knowing how to close a deal. If your goal is to drive sales performance and increase revenue, stay true to a repeatable sales process that leads to predictable sales.

The six steps of the Sales Accelerator lead salespeople from identifying a good prospect to developing a business relationship that results from the sale of your solution. Making it to step five—Close—means the finish line is in sight. But we’ve all heard the phrase, “the end depends on the beginning, and everything in between.”

Based on HubSpot research, only 3% of buyers trust sales representatives. If your sales process follows the cookie-cutter pattern of simply selling a product or service, the chances of you reversing that statistic are slim to none.

If you follow the formulated Sales Accelerator process, you know how important it is to execute the steps in correct order. During Discover, sellers uncovered prospect’s desired business results. The next step is to Advise the prospect on the best solution path, and that starts by determining which solution path is right for the situation.

This is the step where sellers learn how to differentiate themselves and prove to potential clients how they can make their life easier. From determining a solution path to removing surprises and handling objections, there are several points you don’t want your salespeople to overlook.