Why are you losing your sales deals in the closing stage?

Well, you might have been taught by sales managers in your induction program that closing sales deals is an art and it is really simple. You have to be prepared, show up for your sales meetings, leave a mark on your prospects, navigate through their objections, pitch your proposal, and follow-up!

Seems so simple right?

When given a practical view, the selling process is a lot more complicated than this. And then you meet your managers for the weekly reporting, and they point out that you are losing your sales deals in the closing stage. They ask you why is this happening, where are you lacking, and why prospects are losing interest in the deal right before the closure.

And you might say one of these things:

• I was waiting on the doc signature.
• I didn’t do thorough research.
• I couldn’t engage with the right people.
• I slipped a few follow-ups.

Based on the industry you are in, you might have different issues or observations over losing the sales deals in the closing stage.

Losing a deal at the closing stage is equivalent to losing an important revenue opportunity. It also means that all those time-consuming tasks, legwork done for meetings, and traveling have been thrown away.

The science behind deal closure

92% of the salespeople give up follow-up after four rejections. 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting – Salesmate

So, the majority of prospects provide an ample amount of follow-up time to the sales reps before deciding whether they want to decide a solution or not!

Yet the statistics I have shared doesn’t mean that every sales deal is four no away from turning into a successful deal.

48% of sales calls end without an attempt to close the sale – Salesmate

So, let’s throw some light on why you are losing deals in the closing stage!

1. You lack a personalized selling strategy

Deals are not a one-size-fits-all arrangement. If you are deviating from the en-masse strategy is especially significant in the present commercial market where purchasers can plummet in and out of the sales funnel at any phase in their purchasing journey.

The advanced buyers are expecting a customized purchasing procedure that thinks more about their extraordinary difficulties and business needs.

In that capacity, sales agents must know who they are conversing with, where the prospect is in the business cycle, how a buyer progresses through their journey, the context of their pain-points, and the client’s expectations. Utilize this data for tailoring your content, value propositions, and sales strategy. 

A sales enablement tool makes this procedure scalable, assisting in delivering customized deals experience modern buyers want. Dashboards offer crucial insight into the ongoing sales process, deals, and the position of the contacts in the various stages of the sales pipeline. 

Using the data front he dashboard sales agents can easily customize their approach and make a successful sales.

2. You are not selling to the decision-maker

Sales, particularly B2B sales is getting progressively unpredictable in nature. The present sales circumstances and current sales cycle frequently include at least 7 executives, with some purchasing members reaching up to 20 individuals. You must

• find out who has the final purchasing authority.
• understand their needs and pain points. 

Even though there are numerous individuals in the buying process there will be some who are encountering similar pain points in the business process. Sales reps must use this data to their advantage, must direct their discussion in that way so that they can progress the deal through different stages of the pipeline.

3. You failed to point out the correct problem

Sales reps always make the mistake of stretching the conversation too much and give lesser time to the prospects to express their issues. 

The modern buyers are not looking forward to dealing with sales reps that are just going to treat them as a number in the excel sheet and overlook the challenges that they are facing.

I would suggest that you keep your focus on helping these prospects rather than pushing them towards making a sale. Even if they convert, they will neither return to your business nor they will refer your product in their connection.

So what must be done?

Ask them questions and find out about their 

• needs
• challenges
• pain points

If you fail to get answers to these questions you will find it difficult to progress these deals through your sales pipeline.

Always remember that as a sales rep your task is not just closing the deals, it is about making the most of the human connections. You are creating bonds that will bear fruit in the long run.

4. You tried for the closure too early

I hope you are not one of the sales reps who pitch their products on their first call itself. What I am trying to help you understand that you must never pitch your product to the customer without even knowing if they want it or not. 

Yes, it is necessary that you try to close the deals as soon as possible but that doesn’t mean you must be hasty about it.

I am asking you to be patient about the whole scenario and make sure that you gove yourself and the prospects some amount f breathing space. 

For instance, you are trying to find out if the prospect is actually interested in your product or not. To do so, you will need to use workflows and email sequences as your weapon. What you must do is create a follow-up sequence.

Divide these follow-ups steps and synchronize them with the customer journey.

When you are trying to find out if they want your product, just schedule your follow up emails in the below sequence.

• Email one: Send out sales content
• Email two: Share certain useful information about your product with success stories
• Email three: Share a link to your product blog or video that shows your product’s functionalities
• Email four: Send out a feedback email and ask the prospect to rate certain issues he might be facing
• Email five: Based on their revert, share your demo schedule with them
• Email six: Share the link of your calendar and book an online or one-on-one 

Yes, you will have to patient with your prospects and you must know that there has to be an interval of atleast one day between your emails. When you design a follow-up process that is in sync with the buyer’s timeline, you get them to closure.

Never try to force the prospects through your sales funnel as doing so will cause the deal to end and you will lose all those efforts with a revenue opportunity.

To conclude

If you ask reps about the toughest part about their job, they will say it is losing their sales deals in the closing stage. 

And why not, getting new customers onboard and upselling or cross-selling the existing accounts is the way sales reps make their quota. And making the quota is the most important part of their job profile as it brings in the much-required revenue into the business.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, many sales reps miss out on their sales follow-up tasks. This negatively impacts their weekly, monthly, or quarterly quota. By opting for Salesmate CRM, you can not only create and manage your contact data in a centralized library but say goodbye to manual labor. Just use the workflows for automating your most frequent manual tasks, like sending automated emails or reminders for other sales tasks. And this way you can focus important resources your revenue-critical sales deals.