Several weeks ago, I was speaking with Jay Hellwig. Jay is a top sales professional. Jay said, “Zig Ziglar’s tapes on ‘Secrets of Closing the Sale’ are my favorite tapes.” Since there are over 50 specific closing techniques in this set of tapes, I asked Jay what was his favorite technique. Jay thought for a moment and said, “Oh, I don’t have a favorite close.” I asked, “Then how can it be your favorite tape set?” Jay said, “That’s easy. Zig didn’t teach me a closing technique as much as he taught me a closing ATTITUDE! The attitude helps me close more sales than the techniques do.”

A closing attitude. Now, that’s powerful.

Have you thought about your CLOSING ATTITUDE lately? Do you have closing attitude? And if you do, what type attitude is it?

Jay is right. The way you feel about closing the order is oftentimes more important than the technique you use. You probably have a number of strong closes. However, if you lack a strong closing attitude, you will never use those closing techniques.

What is your attitude about closing? Selling is what we do WITH your prospect, not something we do TO your prospect. Closing should be the logical conclusion to your selling activities. It should not be the stage of the sales process that is adversarial between the seller and the buyer. The buyer should be as eager for this stage as the seller is.

What is your attitude toward closing? Why do you ask people to buy from you? You ask people to buy from you so that you can feed your family…not your ego. If you don’t want to bruise your ego, you may be hesitant to ask for the order. However, if you do that enough times, you are not putting bread on your family’s table.

What happens when you ask for the order and you get it? You win! But, what happens when you ask for the order and you don’t get it? Well, you don’t lose! You break even! That’s right … you break even. You can’t lose by doing your job. Your job is to ask people to exchange money for your services. When you do your job correctly you have every right to ask the business owner to buy from you.

When you ask the prospect to purchase from you today, the buyer wants to know that you believe his/her decision is a solid one. You can assist with this if you have a positive closing attitude. You need to exhibit confidence during this stage of the process. If you do, you will be able to expect sales success, not hope for sales success.

Jay Hellwig is right. The closing attitude will close more sales than the techniques!

Good luck and good selling!

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© 2008 Bryan Flanagan, Ziglar Training Systems
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