Ideas to Close Sales Faster Without Being Pushy

Closing sales faster is an overriding goal for both executives and salespeople alike, especially in B2B businesses where deals can take months to come to fruition.
The desire to speed things up can transform selling into a stressful, pressure-filled endeavor. How do you lessen this, while still closing sales faster?

Fill up your lead pipeline

My first tip is to simply work as many deals as possible. It is much easier to relax and avoid being pushy if you have an abundance of workable deals. This is why a sales process is so important. Instead of just winging it, dedicatedly working a good process can’t help but fill your pipeline with a steady flow of prospects.
This eases the pressure somewhat because your life doesn’t depend on closing just one or two particular deals. You make less mistakes and get “in the zone,” confident and competent – and therefore close sales faster without being pushy.

Develop emotional intelligence

If you can match your prospect’s personality, you will build more rapport and avoid coming across as pushy. For example, if you naturally have a driven or dominant personality, you can adjust your tone of voice and language to come across as friendlier and less intimidating. This might be the only way for A-types to sell to soft-spoken or thoughtful buyers without scaring them off. The end result of developing emotional intelligence is closing sales faster through better customer relationships.
How do you develop your own emotional intelligence? A personality test, such as the APQ, can help guide the way. It will illuminate areas of your personality which are over- or under-indexed and zero in on potential problems. Knowing these facts makes adjusting simpler.

Close minor agreements

As you take a buyer along the process, it is important to get them to agree with you along the way. This is referred to as closing minor agreements.
The reason we want to close minor agreements is that it makes us seem less pushy when we ask for the final “yes.” We get the buyer to say “yes” to innocuous things, and they become used to agreeing with us and learn nothing bad happens when they do so.

For example:
· This problem you describe should be taken care of as soon as possible, right?
· It’s a nice color, isn’t it?
· I have a slot next Tuesday, I think that works for both of us, correct?
· That’s not a bad deal, is it?
· If I am not mistaken, you seem to really like this one?

Getting these minor “yeses” primes the buyer to continue to say “yes” once you ask “Do you feel you are ready to move forward?”

To recap, closing sales faster is a product of doing the right things from initial contact to the final close. When you have an abundance of leads and get “in the zone;” and you relate better by adjusting your personality to match your buyers’; and when you get minor agreements along the way, deal velocity increases and you avoid the dreaded pushy salesperson characterization.
Try these tips, and happy selling!