Selling is like walking through a minefield. Take one wrong step, and your deal can blow up in your face. Great salespeople know how to navigate this minefield and successfully move sales opportunities to closure. 

There is a misconception among some salespeople that with the right closing technique, they’ll get a reluctant buyer to say “yes.” Let’s take for example two sales closing techniques with colorful names, the Ben Franklin and the Something for Nothing close.

On this episode a sales training manager asks: Should a salesperson ever push to close the sale? I know many people say a salesperson should push to close the sale. I'm one of those people who, if you push me, you will almost certainly lose—I may buy eventually, just probably not from you. This is partly one reason why I hated salespeople for so long, even though, in reality, I was one too—I just never saw it that way!  

Closing should be the easiest part of selling. It's the natural culmination of a sales conversation. You've helped the buyer identify a problem and then proposed a solution. Nevertheless, I've met many sales professionals who in spite of having excellent selling skills are reluctant to ask for the sale. This reluctance can, of course, impair a sales career and be intensely frustrating to sales managers.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I work at a sales training company, but I have a soft spot for salespeople. Whether it is a pushy door-to-door salesperson trying to sell copying machines to our office, or a telemarketer droning on and on about his or her product, I always try to give salespeople my full attention and let them sell.

Sometimes we have problems, but we don’t do anything about them. Other times our problems are so urgent we take immediate action. Consider, for example, a slow dripping faucet versus a flooded basement. For sales professionals, however, the reality is almost never so extreme. In most cases, assuming you are meeting with a qualified buyer and ask enough questions, you can help the buyer identify a problem.