Close more sales by asking more questions: The virtual closing strategy

Each customer has his own path, asking questions with a goal in mind will reach the map to walk it together.

For many sales professionals, time is the scarce currency and this situation worsens when we spend much of our time chasing unicorns, those prospects who were never ready to buy or were at the wrong time. There are some strategies to measure the stage of the buying process in which the prospect is, such as lead nurturing, and other strategies to determine if our prospect is really ready to become a customer. One of them is the one we present in this text, the virtual closing or the alley interview, in which the prospect sees that the best stage will be to buy from you.

By asking a larger number of questions you can influence your interlocutor to reach the close, well almost. This approach can be called a virtual close and involves simple questions that lead your prospect with only one way out: to buy.

In this technique we must be careful not to confuse it with harassment.

There is a big difference between being proactive and being a harasser.

Let´s look at our own process: What do you normally do in an interview? Do you present products, services, arrange demos, and then what kind of follow-up did you do?

Many times, we have an excellent presentation, the prospect seems comfortable with the offer, however, after leaving your office and making follow-up calls or emails we run into the silent treatment.

This approach that we suggest requires that at the moment of presenting all our products or services, we should dig much deeper into the buying process of our potential customer, So, instead of reciting by heart the advantages of our product, let´s listen to what our prospect has to say and start asking questions until we reach a virtual closing, which is nothing more than the ideal situation in which the prospect would buy our service or product, thus making him visualize doing business with us.

This strategy will also help us to understand the process that we have to follow to reach the ideal situation, where our prospect will make the decision to stay with us, but that does not mean that we should ask questions and rest on our laurels, once we have that experience, we can take action in each of the stages necessary for the prospect to make the decision we are looking for.

So in a hypothetical situation if the prospect says something like - Well, it sounds perfect I will check it and we will contact you - you could continue asking - What else can I do for us to do this business? Normally what is the next step for you - If the prospect answers - Well, I have to present it to my superior and once something is decided we will contact you - you can continue asking - How is the process to present it to your boss? Is it a meeting? When is the next meeting?  and let´s say the prospect tells you -We have weekly meetings, that´s where I would present it for review - to continue but getting closer to that virtual closing -And let´s say your boss and the others present like the proposal, what would be the next step, what would happen next - having as an answer -Well we would have to schedule another appointment to review the details with the others involved -Well, we would have to schedule another appointment to review the details with the others involved. 

You have already reached something, you have taken your prospect to a situation where it opens the door to the decision maker(s), however even though you have already reached the mapping of that path you can still go further. You could continue until you get to your virtual closing by finishing off the prospect - Perfect and let´s say that in that appointment we all thought it was great, a great proposal and we are ready to move on, what would be the next step - only remaining as an answer - Well, make invoices and contracts -.

That´s it, your virtual closing with the prospect, you have made clear together the path to follow to make that sale. Now the process should be simpler and taking action on each of the steps that the prospect was outlining you can reach to know how to close each of the sales that you are working on.

Obviously, this situation is just an example and each prospect will give you their own closing map, so that is where the astuteness of each salesperson comes in to ask questions depending on the interlocutor, the situation and the moment, defining the buying map of each prospect and future client.