How To Focus Your Sales: 8 Key Steps To Closing Deals Before Xmas

Written by: Craig Mckenna, Published on: November 18, 2011

As the mentor and business development guy for many exciting high-growth businesses, it’s been a one helluva week. A week to make sure my clients are focussed on closing deals before Xmas!

But a phone-call on Monday really stuck in my mind.

One of my clients confidently told me he and his sales force had six deals on the table and they were looking forward to closing the deals before Christmas, ready to start delivery in the New Year.

It was all very positive-sounding but it is my role to challenge these things. Unfortunately, as it turned out, only two out of the six deals on the table are realistically going to close before Christmas.

This isn’t the end of the world at all. The other four will close early 2012 and at least he can get his sales force to plan effectively and either

look for more deals, or
allocate his resources differently.

But it could have been bad news.

Qualifying a prospect is probably one of the most important elements for you and your sales force, especially if you are a small business.

If you don’t qualify a prospect, you will waste time trying to sell to people who don’t have the right buying signals in place.

Focusing only on the right prospects will always give you a mental advantage. Why? Because you get in to the ‘win-win’ habit every time.

The 8 Key Steps to Closing Deals Before Christmas

The 8 key stages can easily be remembered with the term SCOTSMAN with each letter representing a stage.

(S) Solution - Have you clarified if your prospect understands what it is that you wish to sell them. What is your solution and why will it work for them?

(C) Competition – Are you aware of any other sales force competing with you to sell to your prospect or for the money they may use to buy from you? Your competition could be internal as well as external.

(O) Objective – Have you a clear understanding of what your client is looking for and why they are in the market? What is important to them now and in the future? Do you improve their services or processes, or do you save them money?

(T) Time scales – Have you clarified what time scale the prospect is working to? Can you deliver within that time scale? Does the time scale work for you? Is there a timing factor that could be used in your favour, for example a financial year end?

(S) Size – Is the potential size of the deal worth the effort needed to win the business? Have you a clear picture of the size of the deal? Is it smaller than ideal but could open doors? Is it too big and may have a detrimental impact on your business?

(M) Money – Does the prospect have the money in budget to pay for your solution? If they don’t have a budget, can they find the money or do you need to consider walking away?

(A) Authority – Are you speaking to the decision maker? The person who ultimately will sign the cheque? Are they even aware that you are speaking to their company? It is no longer imperative to deal with just the decision maker, there is a value in dealing with another contact within the business but very few pieces of business are completed without the main authority signing off on it.

(N) Need – Does the prospect actually NEED your solution? Very few deals happen in the current climate without a clear need. There are many reasons why they may need your solution and it is key that you find out which one is relevant and focus on it.

Sales To-Do’s

If you can answer ‘Yes’ to all the questions about qualifying prospects, then your chances of closing deals are extremely high.

Very few deals will actually happen if one or more of these 8 key stages are missing, and the time you may waste on chasing shadows can never be taken back.

It can be very seductive to get sucked into thinking that every deal will happen. There is a sort of comfort in having a large pipeline that “could” close.

But I would encourage you to qualify properly and allow yourself to focus only the deals that have a chance.

You are always better off closing 3 out of 5 good prospects. If you try to close 2 out of 10 prospects, your focus and resources will be stretched thin.