Your problem isn't closing.

Most salespeople think deals are won or lost at the closing stage. But the truth is, by the time you’re trying to “close,” the buyer has usually already made their decision emotionally.

In this episode, we break down why great salespeople rarely rely on pressure, scripts, or traditional closing techniques — and why the best reps focus instead on discovery, trust, clarity, and understanding buyer psychology early in the sales process.

You’ll learn:

• Why closing techniques often create resistance
• The real reason buyers ghost or delay decisions
• How weak discovery leads to late-stage objections
• What top performers do differently throughout the sales conversation
• How to create natural commitment without sounding pushy

If you’ve ever felt like deals are slipping away at the end of the process, this episode will help you understand what’s really happening — and how to fix it earlier.

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Transcript

Why Closing Feels So Hard

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Most salespeople and a good number of sales managers think that sales are lost because salespeople are bad at closing. In reality, most deals are already won or lost long before you have that final conversation. Now, what's really important to understand, and what I'm going to talk about in this podcast, is that buyers don't suddenly decide at the end. Objections at closing at the point of close, usually symptoms, and closing techniques are often about creating pressure and they in turn will create resistance. So basically, people who rely on closing are doing it all backwards, and top salespeople have already got the close sorted out long before they get to that final conversation. So today, what I want to talk about is why great salespeople really close deals and why sell uh closing itself is overrated. So, first of all, what are the one of the myths? So, a phrase you may well have heard is always be closing. Um that is true in a way, but not in the way that most people use it. So it is not about constantly trying to close the deal and move on. That's often how I see that phrase being interpreted. It is not about pressure tactics, it's not about rebuttals, you're not in some sort of a conflict, this isn't a debate, you're not trying to turn or manipulate the client around, which I've seen really bad salespeople will manipulate the client. And just think about it what happens, you get a lot of buyer remorse, you get people changing their mind, you get a bad reputation, all this sort of stuff. People never come back to you. And some salespeople will use urgency tricks. Now, I'm a big one for using urgency as a way to initiate a decision, but that is only at the point where I know the sale is going to happen. I've already effectively closed that sale. It's about getting the decision made, which is a different thing altogether. So, why do these traditional things fail? Well, first of all, buyers are a lot more informed these days, and

Why Pressure Creates Resistance

SPEAKER_00 2:17

one of the things that a lot of salespeople miss is that trust is often much more important than the tech the techniques you're using. So, what I sell, and if you've listened to my podcast before, you'll know that this is a common theme throughout. Salespeople are problem solvers, that's what we are. If you go in to manipulate, if the make if you make the sale all about yourself, you are already 50% to losing that sale, at least 50%. People and buyers resist pressure, nobody wants to be pressured. And modern buyers are much more influencing confidence than persuasion. So if you need aggressive closing techniques at the end, then I will guarantee you that something has gone wrong much, much earlier in the process, and that may well be why you're listening to this. And if if the reason that you're listening to this is that you're having trouble getting those sales over the line. So let's start with when deals are actually won. So the first thing is and a key stage is the initial discovery conversation, whatever you want to call it. Have you uncovered the real problem? Has the buyer felt that you understood them? Did they emotionally connect at the end at the cost of inaction? Have you built up the pain point? Remember, the reason that they are taking time out from presumably a busy day where

Discovery Where Deals Are Won

SPEAKER_00 3:45

they've got lots of other things to do is that they've reached a point with the issue that they are trying to resolve where they know they have to take action, they've got to take it soon. If you haven't uncovered that stuff, you've already failed. You're already way behind the the the where you need to be, and your chances of closing are already starting to get pretty remote. The next thing is trust. We want to buy from people we trust. So, did you sound credible? Uh were you calm? Were you consultative? Were you honest? How did you come across? Did you actually take time to listen to the buyer? Did you really hear what they were saying? Or did you just pitch? Just did you just read through a brochure or give them the pitch that you give to every everybody? Um, you're not selling to machines, you need to connect with them. What about clarity? Does the buyer clearly understand the problem that they have, the impact that that problem will have on their business if they don't do anything about it? Do they clearly understand the solution? Do they understand what the next step is? If you're if the buyers are confused, they're not going to buy from you. So price objections, delays, ghosting is even worse where they don't come back to you at all or need to think about it. And I've just done a podcast on what that really means. But when you get objections, again, it all comes back to your initial discovery conversations. It's about getting clear on what their requirements are, what their problem is, what the cost to them of inaction is. So I'm not talking about the dollar price, the euro price, the pound price of buying your product. I'm talking about what is it going to cost their business if they do nothing. Because if you haven't defined that, if you haven't got them to explain that to you, then you don't know what the value of your solution is. And this is the big difference between price and value. The two are different. And if you don't understand that, you've already got a big problem. So a lot of objections will come down to weak discovery, that clients don't understand the value of what you're presenting. There's a lack of urgency because you haven't got clarity around what the cost of inaction is, what the pain is. And this a lot of this will also come down to poor qualifications. So, again, what a lot of salespeople do, what a lot of bad salespeople do, or salespeople who are feeling a lot of pressure, that they're not making numbers and they just are starting to feel desperate about getting deals, is that they will talk to anybody and they are not qualifying out the people who will never buy from them. So the thing to take away from this part of the podcast is that when buyers truly understand the cost of staying where they are, that's when urgency will happen naturally. So you need to understand that the close is often just the moment that the buyer verbalizes a decision they've already made emotionally. And this emotional aspect is really important. And I don't care whether you're doing business to consumer, business to business, there will be emotional elements. Again, if you've listened to other podcasts, you'll understand where that comes in. So, what do top salespeople do instead of all of that stuff? And if you have been doing what I've been scribbling

Price Objections Are Value Gaps

SPEAKER_00 7:18

describing, then you really got to listen up because if you carry on doing what you're doing, you're not going to fix the problem that you have. So, top salespeople guide instead of applying pressure, they ask really good questions. So, again, you need to look at the questions you're asking if you're even asking any. And I've seen some salespeople who don't even have questions to ask. Top salespeople create clarity, they slow conversations down, they listen, they listen deeply to what the client is telling them. And again, this sounds ridiculous, but I've seen so many salespeople do it, and it's usually the ones who are struggling, they're not listening anymore, they're just waiting to speak. Top salespeople, I should say, will uncover the motivation so they understand why they are having the conversation, why this person is taking time out from their busy day to spend time with them, and they will control the process very calmly. So this comes back to demonstrating confidence. Using pressure is not generally about confidence. Weak people try to pressure others. If you're if you're very weak, if you don't understand what you're doing, you're feeling vulnerable, you'll apply pressure because it makes you feel like you're in control. If you are confident, it's a completely different story. So, again, if you resort to pre uh using pressure, you really got to rethink your whole strategy. I I recommend my course, go have a look at it, but it will take you through all of this stuff in the detail that you need. You need to be genuinely curious. If all you're doing is pitching, you don't care who that person is. You might as well go talk to a wall because the emotional connection you will create will be about the same. So you need to be genuinely curious, and the client needs to feel that you are genuinely curious about their issue, you are genuine about wanting to resolve it. If they don't get that, then you either need to rethink your approach or think about you know, start making some serious career choices here. And leadership is really important. So I've started releasing some podcasts on leadership, but you are a leader when you're moving to sales. You are a leader, you are leading the client through a process to a conclusion, which results in you getting a sale and then and they getting something that really supports their business or their life or whatever it is that um they are buying things for. So top salespeople are not pushing buyers forwards, what they're doing is removing the friction that stops buyers from moving

What Top Sellers Do Instead

SPEAKER_00 9:58

themselves forward, and that that is a very important distinction. You are basically letting the the buyer drive the process so that they feel that they're in charge, but all the time you are um very discreetly leading the whole process. So um let's look at some practical things you can do here. Before you get to any kind of proposal, before you get to, and you know, I hesitate to use the word close, but let's use the word close. Just ask, does the buyer fully understand the problem? Are they clear about the problem that they have? Have they explained the impact that that problem will have if you if they don't resolve it? Have they explained that in their own words? Because then you and that's really important because then you're you're getting a real insight into how they're understanding what the problem is. Is there a compelling reason to act now? So you need to do this in your early qualification. What's the level of urgency? Have you uncovered the decision criteria? Do you understand what the decision criteria are? Who is in the loop? Do you understand how that decision to buy or not buy is going to be created? And is there an emotional commitment, not just logical? And in most cases, there will be some element of an emotional commitment. And it may be as simple as building trust so that that buyer feels that they can trust you to deliver a solution that will work for them. So if you want to break this down into very simple terms, the framework that you're looking for is clarity, trust, and then commitment. So you need to be getting very clear, establishing trust, and then commitment will come. If you're trying pressure, objection handling and closing tricks, then this is why you're struggling, if that's the reason you're listening to this. So to conclude this podcast, and I've not really been holding back on this one, but this is really important stuff. If you're doing this wrong, you're you're continually going to struggle, and you you've got if you don't fix this, you're not going to have a good sales career. So the best salespeople aren't masters of pressure. This is not about pressure. What they are masters of

A Simple Clarity Trust Commitment Checklist

SPEAKER_00 12:15

is understanding of clarity and a building trust. And when those things are done properly, the close itself, it isn't a battle, it's just something that naturally happens. The buyer already knows the decision is it makes sense, and they've probably made the decision to go with you sometime before you get to the point of getting a contract sorted out or signing on the dotted line, whatever it is for you. So remember, if you feel your problem is closing, or if or if you're a sales manager and you feel that the issue you have with your salespeople is that they can't close, I'm going to suggest to you that it's not about closing at all. It's that they're not doing, or you're not doing, the early stages correctly. Because if you do those early stages correctly, you're only spending time with people who are likely to become clients, and closes will happen almost on their own. It's it's very easy to close off a deal that's been managed correctly from the start. So that is it for this podcast. Um, next time I'm gonna continue on the leadership front, actually, and we're gonna be looking at if you are a sales manager, and this actually applies if you are underperforming as well, because it's one of the reasons people come onto these podcasts. Um we're gonna I'm gonna be looking at how to deal with underperformers and the kind of things you can do, but also what leads to underperformance. So join me on Monday. That's when these podcasts come out. And um, I hope you found this one useful. Please remember to give me a like and a subscribe if you feel I've earned it. And um please remember to check out what's going on. I've got a free course running at the or coming up very soon. And um,

Final Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 14:01

there is, of course, my consultative selling system program that I strongly recommend you take a look at. That's it from me. Bye for now.