Selling to two people in a one call close.

My role in life, apart from being a dad to my two children, is to sell, coach people in sales, learn sales, in fact anything to do with sales…

Over the years I learnt many valuable lessons when selling to two or three people in a one call close environment, i.e. a decision on the day right there and then without the dreaded “we need to talk this over” response. I learnt this from my mentor Tom Hopkins and wanted to share it with you.

When closing I use a process called “breaking the pact”. This is where the husband/wife, brothers, sisters or business partners have said to themselves prior to me turning up “that no matter how good this guy is we are not buying today, well just listen to what he has to say and let him know tomorrow”. It is important to firstly acknowledge this and then go about breaking it and here is what I do.

When closing a sale, I repeat to the first partner all the hot buttons that are important to them and get them agree with what I am saying.  That means that they are saying yes and nodding their head.  ” So John you can see that working with a coach will get you focused on the important things and by working on your cashflow in the first few weeks together we will reduce the overdraft and keep the bank happy”?….

I then turn to the second partner and state all their hot buttons and get them agreeing and nodding their head.  “So Sarah, I we get John focused it will get him out of your hair and we can get on with building systems in the business to free up your time too”…

When either partner sees the other agreeing with me, saying yes and nodding their head, we break the pact in that moment and then you ask for the order. If I fail to do this I generally get the stall and the sale goes nowhere.  It goes something like this.  This all sounds perfect and we are about 90% yes, we need some time to talk this over, time to get our heads around this, can we call you tomorrow?

This happened to me today when I failed to break the pact. I am on the callback list and they are calling me tomorrow!!!!

Make sure when you are selling to multiple people, that you acknowledge and then break the pact that they make before you turn up.