The Best Sales Experts Never Close. They Open.

Truth, how many times have you read that the world’s most successful sales people are the best closers?

Have you ever read about the ‘twenty-three power closes’? Or perhaps the ‘ABC (Always Be Closing) method’?

Ok, here’s my one question...do you like to be closed? Really, can you think of any time in your life when you enjoyed someone trying to close you?

I think we all know the answer to that question is an emphatic ‘NO!’ So, why are we constantly having some sales guru explain to us that closing is not only the most successful way but really the only way to succeed?

Simple. It’s a convenient short-cut. It’s a way to bullet or condense an entire process down to punch-line at the end (or during the entire conversation in the ABC case).

Well, allow me to let you in on a little secret. I became the number one sales person in the country within my industry and a top sales trainer in the US by never closing. Sound impossible? Not at all.

I made a decision at the very beginning of my sales career that I was going to take the approach of being the world’s greatest connector and rapport builder instead. What did that mean? It meant needing to spend some time and money learning about more than just closing.

It meant studying human behavior (psychology). Nothing super-deep. Just some basic things that cause all people to act certain ways. It also meant spending time learning body language. This one I got a lot deeper in because to me it was the best way to be able to read what someone was feeling way beyond their words.

Understanding the four basic pillars of body language: gestures, adaptors, regulators and barriers meant I knew what the mind was thinking although the words were perhaps saying something different.

This grew into wanting to study eye movement access and physiognomy (facial reading).

Ultimately, this all became a way to have a deeper way of truly connecting with others. I figured if I could really connect with others in a different, more meaningful way than they would want to have me and our company as a valuable partner; and, way more often than not that was exactly the case.

What this all meant was I became an expert rapport builder. So, when you read about mirroring and matching someone’s actions that’s what I was doing on a fairly high-level.
What I have found over the years is that most people hear about learning body language, studying eye movement or facial recognition and they either think it is too much work or it’s just something people are trying to sell to them and it’s really a bunch of hocus-pocus.

Let me try to assure you it is definitely not too much work and there’s a reason the top negotiators, speakers, executives, coaches and military intelligence interrogators all use these things to be the very best.

When you talk about body language, facial reading, and eye movement it’s all pre-verbal. These are things that have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. So, the mind will ‘speak’ quite clearly through the body, face and eyes. We just need to know exactly what it’s telling us.

The bottom line is you aren’t spending your days trying to do the very thing most people resist and dislike the most...getting closed.

Instead, let’s look at ways we can open doors, open conversations and possibilities. Closing is a way of concluding a transaction. I never wanted to do that. I never wanted to finish our business together or finalize our partnership. I wanted to constantly find ways to open the process up more and more.

The best part of this was I never had to close. All I had to do was find the truest, deepest way of connecting with my soon-to-be partner. Then, after a thorough understanding of what they really wanted and needed I would simply ask, ‘Where do you think we should go from here?’

9 times out of 10 they were at the very least very interested in what we did and how we did it. However, many more times than not they answered with, ‘We’re definitely interested. What do we do next?’

I do want to be clear with this part, however. Learning all of this took some time and it definitely took some effort. But, it wasn’t particularly difficult ever. All I did was learn one thing and then go out to make sure to pay particular attention to that one thing.

Maybe it was a gesture they regularly used. Perhaps it was how they often rubbed their hands on their pants. Or maybe why they always laughed nervously and folded their arms when I asked them about some piece of past buying history.

The point is I always worked on one, small thing at a time and would build onto the next thing. It was never too much or overwhelming because all I was really doing was paying very close attention to the customer. That bears repeating...

All I was doing was paying very close attention to the customer. Now, there’s a novel concept, eh? I paid close attention to what words they chose, how they said it, whether it was fast or slow, soft or loud, breathing quickly or easily, using lots of gestures or arms folded, lots of smiles and raised eyebrows or lips together and eyes moving around the room.

But, it was always just one of these things. So, there was never a feeling of confusion or being overwhelmed with too much to notice at one time. Because all I ever did was spend a day or two learning to pay attention to one more thing and that was it.

So, these are your marching orders my friend; begin to learn about these areas and you will understand more about human beings both in and out of work. Learn these one step at a time and you will find yourself becoming more engaged with friends and family as well.

You know why? To say it one more time...because you will (perhaps for the first time in your life) be paying close attention to their real thoughts, feelings and emotions. Not just going through some means to get to the end (how can I close this deal?). But rather, how can I achieve a deeper, better, more meaningful understanding of this person and learn how to best help them with their wants and needs? I.E. How can I be far more than just a vendor or a sales guy? How can I be a friend, a trusted partner...a comrade through thick and thin?

Become an expert in that area and you will become the happiest, highest paid sales person in your industry. That’s a promise.