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The Gentle Art Of First Call Closing
The following article is a review of the video,
The Gentle Art of First Call Closing. This video shows a small part of a group training
session that Hal Slater does in one of his Advanced Communications Training Programs.
These programs have been executed across North America and Europe and represent the idea
blend of the latest advances in Human Behavioral Science with lessons from 30 years of
highly successful selling.
When I first sat down to watch this tape, I thought I would get the usual step-by-step, " Do as I do and you’ll close every sale routine, but I was in for a surprise. My neighbor, Mike, an insurance salesman, joined me for the viewing. I told him that the tape was supposed to contain 14 original ideas about first call closing. He said, "Oh, no, not another 'vapor-training' show where the trainer rolls his eyeballs like 'Tony Robbins'. I assured him that Hal Slater was a salesman who had learned his stuff through belly-to-belly selling and was not to be confused with late night cable TV hucksters pitching get rich quick schemes to an audience of out of work actors. "Why close on the first call"? asked Hal during the introduction. Mike urged me to fast forward to the real meat. We skipped through how people buy and stopped where Slater demonstrates a life-size file cabinet containing all the reasons that keep people from making a decision today. "Why do people hesitate even when they are convinced?" asks Slater.
As I stopped the tape, Mike answered, "Because they don’t trust you, and without trust, the information can’t filter into the customer’s brain." Good point. Slater covers it a few minutes later and Recalls it the "warm up portion" of the sales call. How? With Neuro-Rapport Skill. Mike’s hand grabbed the pause button and Slater's face froze into a
jittery grin, Mike had read about Neuro-linguistic programming and interrupted saying, "They’ve got that wrong. It should be pseudo-rapport skills', this isn’t real psychology, icspseudo-psychology." I calmed him down and advised him to be objective.
Back to Hal Slater. He demonstrates how we can match a customer’s body posture, how we can adjust to his tone of voice and tempo. Slater's moves are flawless. He’s in total command of his body and almost uses the client as a tuning fork before he starts humming his way to the close.
After the demonstration, Slater ex-plains, 'Reading people is possible because our mind and bodies are so connected that we can not change one without changing the other."
Mike was mesmerized. Slater's ideas left stretch marks on his forehead. A few minutes later, a member of the audience was called by Slater to demonstrate how to read the buyer’s mind inner strategy.
During a brief warm-up conversation, Slater directed the attention of the audience to the subtle head nods his guest used to accent his expressions of agreement. After the audience recognized the subtle head nods that indicate agreement and disagreement, Slater took a bold step. He asked the guest to pick a card from a deck and conceal the face of the card. He then asked the guest not to speak. I’ve never seen anything like this before " muttered my friend with a respectful tone of voice.
As the tape moved on we learned a variety of
closing techniques designed to remove any remaining customer resistance. Slater calls his
technique CIAO. Like the Italian word for "hello" and good-bye." CIAO
stands for Confirm, Isolate. Answer and asking for the Order. "
The good part of this approach is," Mike says he is now in complete agreement with Slater" that if you are able to engineer an atmosphere of agreement with your customer, you won’t get any closing resistance"
Mike and I agreed that this is the first video where nonverbal and Neuro-linguistic techniques are applied in a practical way to advance the sale, not just to advance the viewer’s thinking. I think that the ideas are worth at least ten times the price of the video.
Rated W for Worthwhile
Capt. Lawrence J Tuttle, Retired
Reprinted from 'Personal Selling Power'
"Your magazine for sales
success"
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