It’s been a widespread belief that closing is the only thing that matters in sales ever since Alec Baldwin introduced his ABC (Always Be Closing) sales strategy in the 1992 film “Glengarry Glen Ross”. He quotes “Only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted.” However, the most successful salespeople know that closing is only one component when it comes to the art of selling. If you want to really stand amongst the best in their respective field, you have to not only master the close but two other critical components that are equally important. I’ll walk you through the high-level view of my Triple C sales process that I’ve used to train hundreds of employees throughout my career, many of which that had little to no sales experience, and developed into some of the most results-oriented leaders and salespeople in the their industry.

THE CREATOR

You must be a creator of your own opportunities. Waiting for the next customer to walk in the door or call in will leave you at average at best, even if you are a great closer. Creating your own opportunities should be broken down into two areas of focus. One, finding new traffic. Two, maximizing sales opportunities with existing traffic. Every sales transaction will be a result of you either reaching out to drive customers to you or creating sales out of traffic that was already coming in.

NEW TRAFFIC

The first one we’ll talk about is going after new traffic. New traffic could be new or existing customers, but they don’t have it on their agenda to come to see you. If this hasn’t been a focus, you’re not selling at your greatest potential. When traffic is non-existent, it’s the go-getters that understand how to go after new traffic that end up eating the others alive that don’t.

Becoming a great creator of new traffic means you have to become an ambassador for the product or service you are selling. This means when you’re off, you’re not really off; you’re promoting your product or service when an opportunity presents itself. This salesperson takes advantage of every setting, tool, and resource at their disposal. They’re taking advantage of social settings with family and friends, sharing what they do with the waitress, handing out their card to the cashier at the gas station, branding themselves on social media as the go-to person for their specific product or service, and using one of the most effective tools out there that has been around for ages  — the telephone.

Facebook, for an example tool, is a very disruptive platform that gives creators access to over 2 billion users worldwide and over 200 million in the U.S. alone. With such a large audience within your reach, you can immediately increase your traffic. I encourage you to research what other top performers do in your space and control C and V.

If you want to really take your sales to the next level, you have to embrace this new-age revolutionary technology called the PHONE. Many salespeople think calling is dead, and, well, they’re silly, and have no respect for numbers. The numbers say that 98% of sales occur after a first meeting (yes, only 2% occur at the first), and 80% of sales require at least 5 follow up calls after the first meeting, as reported by Marketing Donut.  Now think about how many existing or potential customers didn’t even get added to your call list. That smells like cash burning and being reduced to nothing but ash right before your eyes.

So if you want to create new traffic and outperform the slackers, start dialing, start posting, and start representing yourself in every space as the only go-to person for the product or service you have to offer.

EXISTING TRAFFIC

Not only is it important to go out and find new opportunities, but you must also maximize the ones you have in front of you. Every great creator has a list of best practices written down or in their head that allows them to have a multi-dimensional sales approach to every opportunity.

A costly mistake salespeople make with existing traffic is not seeing an opportunity within the opportunity. For example, let’s say you work for a call center that takes calls for Mbrace, a Mercedes-Benz service that offers luxury services and features for Mercedes-Benz owners. Let’s say you’re driving down the road and your kid accidentally hits the i button by accident and it dials through to the mbrace® Secure call center. The customer care rep on the other end has two options after you’ve explained that the call was by accident: one, tell the caller “no, worries” and politely end the call, or two, start asking discovery questions that uncover the callers need or creates the callers desire for the solution. You see, the caller doesn’t need to call in to inquire about the service in order for the rep to create an opportunity out of the call, the rep just needs to see the caller as an opportunity.

THE CLOSER

I’ve seen salespeople offer extraordinary customer service to potential customers and end up empty handed many times over because they thought that their knowledge and politeness alone would drive the customer to say “okay, perfect, sign me up”. Knowledge and politeness doesn’t close, askers close.

While being patient, confident, knowledgeable and genuinely friendly are mandatory in nearly all spaces to gain buy-in from potential customers, they’ll get you very little results if your end goal isn’t to ask for the sale and exhaust every angle to close it.

Oftentimes, people mistake asking for the sale as this aggressive approach turns customers off and portrays you as “salesy”. Not at all. In fact, it’s important that you avoid coming off as too aggressive because it does repel customers.

Effective closers are rarely even identified as salespeople because of the language they use to close. In the wireless industry, my favorite line after educating and building rapport with the customer was “So, have you ever checked to see what you qualified for with us? Perfect, well, let’s take a look real quick and see what we can do for you. Do you have your ID?” Dissecting this, there are several things that are important to note. One, I avoided the term “credit check”. Why? Because customers hate it. Credit just has a negative connotation by itself, and anything negative increases my risk of facing rejection. Two, I didn’t ask if the customer wanted to check to see what they qualified for, I positioned it as a statement that assumed they were going to let me check. Three, I called them to take an action by asking for their ID. This single closing segment at the end of the process allowed me to transition from the informative stage on the showroom floor to the workstation to capture signatures and close the deal.

Now, not all askers are created equal. Some salespeople that ask for the sale ask casually and give up after the first no. As a voice for all hardcore closers, I officially ban one-time “no” getters from calling themselves a closer. The real closers have a “there is no option B” mentality. There’s a certain sense of urgency and hustle out of a real closer that sets them apart from the average closer. Real closers ask for the sale multiple times, each with a unique angle, reinforced key points, and a follow-up until they get a firm “no, never call me again” if they weren’t able to close during the previous interactions.

If you want to close more – study more, practice more, test more, and learn more. The greater your arsenal for closing becomes, the greater your closing percentage becomes.

THE CARE CHAMP

It’s the Care Champ, the experience the customer gets after the close, that determines whether or not they’ll continue to be a lifelong, loyal customer. Top-performing salespeople will experience a gradual, and sometimes rapid, decline in performance when they focus solely on creating and closing and skip the role of the Care Champ.

With the competitive retail environment and the multiple online spaces to voice gripes, it’s easier now more than ever to have your customers put their experience with you front and center in the digital world for the local, national, and even global community to see. An interesting survey conducted by BrightLocal found that only 13% of consumers will consider doing business with a company that only has 1 or 2-star ratings, and nearly 70% of consumers said that they feel they can trust a local business more with positive reviews. So it’s critical to long-term success that you focus on an unparalleled customer experience with every customer because reviews can be life or death for you or your company.

It’s very simple. If you want to sustain great levels of performance, you have to care for your customers.  You have to go above and beyond, no matter if a sale is directly involved or not. It’s this very component that keeps customers coming back to you, driving referrals, additional business, and credibility that attracts new customers.

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In conclusion, these are the three C’s that, when brought together, will take your sales performance to elite levels. What I encourage you to do is rate yourself on each C and then ask co-workers, leaders, and even family and friends where they think you are on each C. You then take that feedback and write out the specific things you can execute on to improve your rating. No great salesperson is ever too great to assess themselves, invite constructive criticism and use that to optimize their performance.

Learn. Elevate. Disrupt.

Kash