Make More On Every Sale: Three Ways to Boost Your Deal Size Right Now
If you’re a sales professional, you have to meet your sales targets every month. Boosting your deal size helps you hit those goals sooner, gives you more breathing room to go after bigger deals, and means happier customers because they really get what they want. Read on if you want to learn how to sell bigger deals.
Closing bigger deals requires three things: having more to sell your customer, having the skills to sell more to your customer, and having the confidence to ask your customer for a bigger deal.
Have More to Sell
What else does your customer need for a better experience with your offering? Common business add-ons include accessories, supplies, extended warranties, consulting, and service agreements.
If you can offer products and services that solve parallel problems that customers commonly have, you’ll always sell more. For example, if you sell computer supplies, odds are they could use some power conditioners — and mouse pads — for their new computers. If you sell cosmetics, they could use makeup remover and cleansing pads. If you sell airline tickets, they could use a ride to and from the airport(s).
“What does your customer need to get the best experience? Sell them all of that!“
Offering bundles increases your sales. You may have experienced this on late-night TV infomercials. “… You get this amazing space-age neo-cleaner, the deluxe ultra bucket, the mega dirt-buster brushes, the microfiber nano-tech quantum cleaning cloths, the my-gracious-that’s-glorious gloves, the gorgeous dirt-revelation goggles, and the professional-size bottle of 100 percent aspirin; everything you need for the headache-free way that makes your home instantly spic and span, all for the astonishing low, low price of…” (I know, you’re ready to buy.)
They do it because it works. How can you bundle your products and services into a complete offer for your customer?
Have the Skills to Sell More
If all you do is deliver what your customer asks for, you’re not a sales person, you’re an order taker that can be quickly replaced. A sales professional discovers what a customer wants to accomplish – what’s their goal – and helps them achieve it by introducing them to new options that they hadn’t considered before.
The required skills include the ability to ask smart and relevant questions that quickly diagnose the customer’s pains and dreams and identifies their ideal outcome. While many have been trained to sell to pain, real pros know that the money gets made selling to fulfill dreams.
“The better you get at asking smart questions, the more you’ll sell.”
For example, if you’re a waiter, ask, “What are you celebrating?” Even if they say, “Nothing,” you can say, “There’s got to be something you’re grateful for.” More often than not, you can put them in a celebratory mood, which let’s them justify buying more. (Always works on me.)
Confidence to Ask for More
Often sales people are afraid that if they ask the customer to buy more, it will kill the deal. Not so!
The classic asking-for-more experience happens with car dealers who offer you all kinds of obscenely high-margin goods and services when you’re arranging for auto financing. “You need the tire road-hazard warranty, the invisible bra, window tint, anti-corrosion undercoat, anti-haze paint coating, and life-time all-risk protection suite because you know these high-tech cars are extremely expensive to fix when they stop working…”
“Sales insanity is deciding that a customer won’t buy before you ask them.”
Do you get up and walk out of the finance office? Probably not. (Except for you over there.) Nope, you listen to the pitch and might even buy something that feels valuable to you while purchasing the car of your dreams.
Very, very few customer object when you offering more, more, more. (Let me tempt you with dessert? How about coffee to keep the evening going? Maybe an after-dinner drink to seal the deal?) So take the chance and ask for more. You’ll be delighted how often they say, “Okay!”
Have the products, skills, and confidence and you’ll sell more.
Mark S A Smith
Working with leaders to bring in the right customers, fast.
P.S. I’ve created an on-line training session that goes much deeper into creating value by automating the customer acquisition process without cold calling. Sign up here to take the class as my guest.
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