Posted on: Saturday, March 13th, 2010

The sales process is best thought of as a partnership with your customer.  That means a constant involvement of the prospect in the demonstration process.

One mistake often made by salespeople is the failure to constantly involve the customer in the sales conversion through active commitments.  Too many salespeople go through the process assuming there is an acceptance on the part of the customer without actually asking for that commitment.

The rationale in not asking these commitment questions sounds like this: “I already know they love this kitchen – why would I need to ask that?”  Actually, there is a very sound reason for asking for a commitment in this instance.  You see, we don’t ask closing questions for our own benefit; we ask closing questions for our customer’s benefit.  Their active acceptance cements their commitment.

I read of this example this week from a restaurant that was seeking to increase customer commitments to keeping the reservations they made.  The restaurant dropped their no-show rate from 30% to 10% on phone reservations.  How?  Instead of saying, “Please call if you have to cancel”, they changed the line to, “Will you please call if you have to cancel?”, then they waited for the response.

Where could you get more active commitments from your customer? Take advantage of that opportunity and you’ll shorten the buying process.