Three Simple Steps to Close Your Sales Deal

If you find yourself getting stuck in the sales process, and even if you don’t, this post is for you! 

PandaDoc’s former Sales Enablement Manager, Patrick Downs, came together with Hubspot's Content Marketing Manager, Dayne Topkin, to discuss effective ways of closing a sales deal. They mention that a good sales representative must actively close throughout the sales process and not just at the end. The goal is to always be driving toward an outcome. 

During Patrick and Dayne’s conversation, they outline three steps one can take—building a business case with metrics throughout the sales process, confirming a champion, and using time-based incentives to close the deal. 

The entire webinar runs approximately 26-minutes long, and watching it in its entirety is definitely worth your time. Patrick and Dayne share the information in a way that lets you test it out immediately to see if these tips and tricks work well for your business.

Let’s review the main ideas from the webinar together.

Build a Business Case

To start the webinar, Patrick and Dayne discuss building a business case with metrics to present to prospects. Prospects have a big question in mind when reviewing potential new software, which I can attest to: ' Is this worth my time and resources to even look at?’

I completely agree with this analysis. My process when reviewing anything is to decide first whether the item or software is worth my time and resources. If something indicates it isn’t, then I tend to move on. 

With this in mind, it’s crucial to establish a business case using metrics throughout the sales process. Sales representatives need to get the prospects' opinion on the pain point your business can solve for them and share a story where the product has helped another company overcome the same pain point. Leverage metrics from past successes to add credibility to your story. 

When leveraging metrics in discussing your past successes, you will often use the return on investment (ROI) calculator. This calculator can be a tricky and tense point of conversation. The prospect may push back, saying that your aspirations for how much your product can increase the prospect's company revenue are too high. 

Use the ROI calculator as a conversation piece and ensure you analyze alongside the prospect. Don’t just present the metrics as a set of numbers. Remember that you are sharing a story of how the prospects’ company will use your product for success, and you are taking the prospect on that journey with you.

Confirming Your Champion & Time-Based Incentives

After you have built the business case and taken the prospect on a journey of how they will use your product for success, you must confirm your champion—the individual who will sell your vision to leaders on the prospect's side. 

To find your champion, talk to your prospect. Ask the prospect if they are ready to recommend your company for purchase to their leaders. This question is a good way to see where they are in the sales cycle and how they feel about your product. If they are hesitant, you can identify blockers and create a plan to overcome them. 

Once you confirm the champion and solidify your company’s value in their mind (they are confident and ready to champion your product to leadership), you can use time-based incentives to help you control when the deal is signed.

When you give the prospect a time-based incentive to sign by a certain day, you keep the deal at the forefront of the prospect’s mind and possibly accelerate the signing process. 

There is no set rule with time-based incentives. You have to decide the discount you want to use and the amount of time you want to allow. 

Let’s recap what we have discussed and preview what’s coming next.

Recap & What’s Next

If you haven’t watched the webinar, make sure to click the link above and check it out! Patrick and Dayne dive deeper into building a business case with metrics, confirming your champion, and using time-based incentives. 

Next week, we will discuss how to compete against your major competitors 👀. If you want to get a head start, check out the podcast. 

Before then, we want to hear from you.

How do you use time-based incentives to close deals and speed up the sales process? Have you found that a certain timeframe works best? 

Let us know in the comments!