Inbound Selling

Chapter 7Closing and Negotiating

Drawing from my own experience, I know that a lot of sales reps have room for improvement when it comes to asking for someone's business. For example, at the end of an exploration or sales process, I often hear sales reps say something like “Well, what did you think? What are the next steps?” This often ends with the prospect saying something like “It was great but I need to circle back with the team and see where we go from here.” Then the chase begins.

But what if the chase didn't have to happen? Or what if it happened less often? What would you do with all that extra time? To help all sales reps and sales leaders continuously learn and improve a wide variety of sales skills, I'll start by sharing this “greatest hits” list of closing techniques. Pete Caputa and Danielle Herzberg taught me these techniques, so connect with them on LinkedIn or Twitter and say thanks.

The Inoffensive Close¹

This is the closing technique I discussed at great length in the previous chapter. To the best of my knowledge, this closing technique first appeared in Dave Kurlan's book Baseline Selling. Dave does not necessarily endorse what I say here, nor does he necessarily support the accuracy of this description, but I certainly want to give credit where it's due—and thanks, for that matter, as this was a tried and true method I've used throughout my career. This approach, as outlined next, was specifically taught to me while I was a rep at HubSpot under Dannie Herzberg ...