How To Close The Deal Once You Have Contacted Your Targets

Jarron Vosburg, Director of Enterprise Accounts, JumpCrew

Now that you’ve heard from a few of our industry favorites, this section will help you qualify prospects and close the deal with your target audience. Closing deals isn’t about persuading someone to purchase what you’re selling. Closing deals is about demonstrating that what you’re selling solves a critical problem for the buyer. Creating value for potential customers starts from the very first interaction.

Once a prospect has responded to your email, it’s essential to conduct a qualifying conversation. A qualifying conversation allows both you and the prospect to identify:

1. Is there a pain point that needs solving?
2. Does your product solve the pain point they’re experiencing?
3. Does the cost of your product fit within the budget of what they’re willing/able to pay?
4. Is your prospect the ultimate decision-maker that would purchase your product?

There are various qualifying methodologies, but a solid one to use is BANT -an acronym that stands for budget, authority, need, and timeline. If these criteria are met, then the prospect is considered an “opportunity” and the rep can proceed with the sales process. One of the most critical parts of demonstrating value is to show the prospect that you’re listening and that you understand the problem you’re mutually working together to solve. After the qualifying call, which is typically informal and
conversational, the next step is to conduct a formal overview, or demo, of your product and how it solves your prospect’s problem.

During the demo, restate key takeaways from the qualifying call at the very beginning of the pitch. This immediately conveys that you were listening closely and have tailored your presentation with your prospect’s problem in mind. This allows your prospect the opportunity to clarify, correct, or amend any of what was said or understood from your initial conversation. Most often they will restate what’s most important to them, this will
give you a better direction of what to highlight and focus on during the pitch.

It’s important to remember that a pitch should really be a conversation. Avoid talking at your prospects and instead engage them at opportune times. Questions like, “You mentioned that ‘x’ is a huge challenge for your company. From what you’ve heard, can you tell me how you feel our solution addresses that challenge for you?” This will keep your prospect focused, as well as arm you with even more talking points to highlight during the pitch.

When you’re done, it’s essential that you set expectations for the next steps. The best way to do this is to be direct, but helpful, and ask questions like “From your perspective, what is still outstanding that we would need to make this partnership happen?”.

From this moment on, the salesperson’s responsibility is to provide value with every prospect interaction. Whether it’s contract examples, case studies, action plans, or one-off questions, the key to closing deals is to support your prospect’s through their due diligence, not to hard close them with ultimatums or deadlines.

We have a philosophy at JumpCrew that every interaction needs to add more value. Avoid emails like “Just following up” or “Bumping this to the top of your inbox” and replace them with emails that provide insight, updates, strategic ideas, or even humor. An easy way to check yourself before sending an email is to ask, “Am I providing value to my prospect?” If
the answer is no, it’s time to rethink the content of your communication.

Closing deals isn’t about convincing someone, or overcoming objections, or having great one-liner analogies. Closing deals is about investigating whether or not there’s a problem, researching and proposing a solution, then adding context and feedback to fine-tune that solution until clear expectations are set and both parties have a realistic understanding of
what happens next. If your team adopts this sales approach and they’re pitching to the correct target audience, you’ll see a meaningful improvement in the quality of your customers, as well as a significant increase in the amount of time they plan to stay your customers.