Take The Sale To Completion

Most salespeople go ninety-five percent of the way and only get five-percent of what's available.  Then there is the five-percent who goes one hundred percent of the way and gets ninety-five percent of what's available.  The latter group doesn't give up and takes the sale to completion.  

When I launched The Duncan Group in 1992, we had an opportunity to meet with the head of production and training as well as 4 regional managers with American Savings.  They were in the market for sales training solutions to help their loan officers be more productive.  

We knew we were competing with two other vendors and that this would be a sizable six-figure contract.  We sat down at their conference room and the head of production said, "So tell us about The Duncan Group".  First test – don't answer.  We did not want to say anything about what we could do for them since we had not even asked one question.  So I said, "The Duncan Group is a lot of things to a lot of companies but to make sure we are right for you, what is important to you about the training solution you invest in?"  It seemed like minutes went by but they started talking and started telling us what they were looking for.   

About 45-minutes later we had learned what they were looking for, presented strategic solutions we thought lined up and then asked for the business.  The head of production said, "we loved what you guys talked about doing, but as you know we have two more vendors to meet with."  We asked, "is there anything else we can do for you at this point to give you even more confidence in us."  The answer was a polite "no", followed by "we will let you know within two weeks what our decision is."   

For most sales people, they think they are done, and they will nervously wait for the call and "hope" they got the deal.  Not us.  We immediately wrote 5 thank you notes to each of the Executives present and gave them to the receptionist to deliver them.  Then every two days the 5 Executives received a testimonial letter from a bank we had done work for – 7 letters strategically delivered in unique ways to catch their attention and remind them that we should be their choice.

Well, almost to the day, they called and awarded us with a nice 6-figure contract.  When we asked them why they had chosen us they said, “You seemed like you really knew what we were looking for and you wanted the business.  The other companies pitched their products, didn’t ask any real meaningful questions and did not follow up.  We want our loan officers to sell like you guys.”

The extra 5% made all the difference and we ended up with over 1MM in income from one bank over the next several years.  Don’t ever give up!