Network Marketing Article - Why There is So Much Emphasis on the Close.

In this Network Marketing article I want to address the way in which most of us try to clinch the deal!

Nearly all the Network Marketing training I’ve come across, talks about ‘the close’ i.e. getting people to sign up or buy.  But the questions is, why are we taught a myriad of approaches for achieving this, and how has this evolved? More crucially - does it actually work?

First, here’s a brief lesson in human psychology.  Think about a conventional sales person in a typical sales situation. The outcome they're obviously looking for is the sale.  Now the way the human mind operates when determining what works and what doesn’t work for us, is that it pays attention to the events that happened immediately before the desired outcome i.e. the sale. This is called ‘the close.’ 

So while it appears that the actions of the close are the important ones, when researched that’s not so clear.

For small ticket sales (low priced) where the aim is to carry out the whole sales process with a customer in one conversation, then closing techniques are effective. 

For large ticket items, (higher priced or more significant) closing techniques have been shown to reduce the likelihood of a positive outcome.  Bear in mind that asking somebody to join your team as a business partner is a large ticket item, because even if the finances involved are small, the commitment is large.

For large ticket items the most important stage is discovering if the person has a need, then whether and how you can fulfil it.  Some people call this ‘the discovery stage’.

Surprisingly, being confident at the start isn’t necessary for a good outcome! Studies show that even people who stumbled over their words, muttered, were unclear and sounded very unconfident, could get equally good outcomes

So in network marketing, the emphasis on all these closes has come about because, until recently, the sales approach dominated.  Now we’re fortunate that the grip of the salesmen is reducing, although the legacy still remains.

Even if the people walking onto the stage at the company training event are not trained sales people, there's a tendency for them to keep regurgitating the same old stuff, simply because they still don't know what works for them. They’ve just picked up a little bit of information as they’ve gone along which they pass on to you, you pass it on to your team members and so on. 

As always - I urge you to pay close attention to where and who you're getting your ideas from!

On the other hand, large organisations with huge sales teams spend large amounts of money training them. Besides training, much effort is spent on researching what works and what’s best practice.  This can make radical changes to the outcome for sales staff. 

So who should we listen to about the best way to carry out large ticket sales? Should we listen to the people walking onto the stage who are just saying what their sponsor told them, or should we listen to the people who’ve researched and understand the sales process?

In this network marketing article, hopefully I’ve shown you that there’s strong researched-based evidence for changing the approaches we take. Can you please drop all those fancy closes?  Surely it’s enough to use a simple one like "Well what do you want to do now?"