Bling!

You got a new email from a potential client. We love that sound, don’t we?

S/he is asking for a quote for a potential assignment.

You work hard to prepare the best quote. We analyse his/her needs, the aspects to be covered, the working hours that you’d need to make everything done, and write a very detailed email explaining everything to this potential client.

This can take a while to prepare. Tell me about it!

It’d be worthy if every time that a client asks for a quote, this gets accepted. But what happens when most of them aren’t?

You end up losing time over something that isn’t generating any revenue.

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Why don’t quotes get always accepted?

 

If you’re receiving a lot of petitions from potential clients asking for a quote, it seems that you’re doing a good work in terms of marketing, as you’re reaching potential clients interested in your business.

However, if most of these quotes aren’t accepted, we’re facing a selling problem. Your selling process isn’t converting. In other words, you’re not selling as much as you could.

This may be due to two different reasons:

1. Your business isn’t correctly positioned in the market. That means that you’re not reaching your ICAs.

The most common example that I’ve dealt with is businesses selling products at premium prices but they are reaching price sensitive clients.

2. Your business is correctly positioned in the market; hence you’ve got a problem in your selling process.

That’s why it’s so important to analyse your selling process and analyse every step and action that potential clients have to go through to buy from you.

Today I’m going to focus on this second option, but if you want me to cover the first option in a different post, feel free to leave a comment below.

3 tips on how to close a sale

1. Connect with your potential client

I would say that this is the most important aspect of a sale. You and your clients must click, if you want to guarantee a sale.

Unless you work with price sensitive clients (and believe me here, we don’t want to work with this type of clients), potential clients will go for those professionals who they feel a connection with.

The best way to do so is by having a face-to-face meeting, maybe a chat on Skype where you can see each other or if you’re living close enough maybe you can go a grab a coffee to discuss he details of the assignment.

Showing the human side of your business will increase your chances to close a sale.

Show yourself interested in the project and ask questions so they can see that you want to provide the best services.

If you don’t like having face-to-face meetings, you can also do it through email. You must personalise every single email that you send. Make your client feel special and not another number on your client database.

2. Be the one and only for your potential client

With this meeting we want to make our potential clients feel that you’re the best person in the market to work with.

You must cover all your clients’ concerns and needs. Ask them if they have any doubts about something related to your services and make them see that you can solve or work on these doubts in a personalised way.

Ask yourself: how is my proposal better than any other one in my market?

3. Set a deadline

Every time you issue a quote, make sure that you tell your client that is valid until X date. Otherwise, you could be waiting for ages until your clients make up their minds.

If you set a date, this date will get stuck in your clients’ mind and you’re “forcing” them to make a decision in a limited amount of time.

4. Convey scarcity

Tell your potential clients that your time is limited and you’re also working on different projects.

For example, you can tell your potential client that you’ll be able to work on his project next month. And then tell him that a project was cancelled and that you’re able to start working on the project in two weeks, but that you need an answer now before telling this opportunity to the rest of your clients.

Even if it’s not true. Sometimes it’s allowed to be a bit cheeky in business, isn’t it?

 

Now that you know these tips on how to close a sale, do you implement any other tip to increase the chances of closing a sale? I’d love to hear from you so don’t hesitate to leave a message below.