The Lock and Key-Unlocking Firm Commitments

My second book is titled The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales. I wanted to title it The Art of Commitment Gaining. My experience was that closing is one of the easier outcomes to attain if you had the 10 conversations and commitments I outlined in the book.

About half of these conversations and commitments are relatively easy to secure and the other half tend to be more difficult because the client is resistant or unprepared. By helping your client to have these conversations, you improve your chances of winning their business. The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales may be the first book to provide a nonlinear approach, one that allows you to engage in each conversation when the client needs it. It also describes how to track your shared progress in their buyer’s journey.

This is a better approach than the linear sales process most salespeople still use, even though it is more complicated. The purpose is to help you secure firm commitments regarding the following.

Time

The first of all commitments is the commitment for time. As cold outreach and automation have proliferated, it has become more difficult to acquire a meeting. Unlocking this commitment will require you to trade value for your client’s time. To see my pitch for a meeting, watch “The 17-Minute Cold Call Course for B2B Sales.

Exploration

This is one of the easier commitments to gain. It is your focus in a first meeting. One of the most effective strategies in securing this critical commitment is an executive briefing, which is covered in two books, Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition, and Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative. You unlock this commitment by helping the client understand why they need change.

Change

This is one of the more difficult commitments. Instead of qualifying the contact, you ask about what the client will need to change. You need to help your client consider the investment, the time, and the ability of their teams to reach consensus. Unlike other methodologies, you need not disqualify the client. Instead, you can continue a conversation that allows you to help them prepare to make change.

Collaboration

I wish I had written more about collaboration. More and more, selling is collaborative, especially when both the salesperson and their prospective client work together. To unlock this conversation, you work with your client to build the solution they need to succeed. This is an easy commitment.

Consensus

This may be one of the most difficult commitments to gain, as many buyers and decision makers find this to be a messy, political, and challenging process. You may have contacts who try to avoid having to build consensus, but without it both you and your client may fail to make the change they need. You unlock this commitment by helping your contact know their initiative is at risk.

Investment

Most of the time, this is rather easy. If you have a higher price than your competitors, you may want to move this up to the beginning of the sales conversation. Even though we don’t focus on qualifying, you should not waste time with a client that isn’t open to paying more to improve their results. This tends to be easy most of the time.

Review

Before you provide a presentation and a proposal, ensure what you share is something your client agrees is right for them. This is an easy commitment to gain because there are no serious negative implications or consequences. You can unlock this key with nothing more than asking to make sure what you propose is what your client wants.

Resolving Concerns

If you have ever heard a contact tell you they will meet with their team in the next two weeks and reply to you, you are in deep trouble. And so is your contact. Only one person is responsible for resolving the client’s concerns, and that’s you. If you are not in the meeting where this happens, your contact will have a tough time. Unlocking this commitment is rather difficult. Ask for the last 20 minutes of the meeting to make certain their team is confident they will succeed.

Decision

This is “the ask.” Despite all the hokey language choices you find online and in old books, this is one of the easier ones to unlock, provided you have done good work throughout the sales conversation. I like transitioning to this commitment using this language: “Unless you have a concern to tackle, I’d like to give you a contract and put your solution in place. Is there anything else you need to get started?”

Execution

This can be difficult. Sometimes your client buys but doesn’t execute. You and your team need to intervene and ensure your client is executing and producing the results they need. This can be a difficult lock to pick, but without execution, you are likely to lose the client, and they will fail to improve their results.

The Lock and Key: Gaining Firm Commitments

If you or your team needs help winning deals, one way to improve your sales results is gaining the commitments your client needs to make. This is the best way to ensure they have every conversation necessary to decide to buy from you.

Instead of believing the commitment to decide is the only one worth pursuing, recognize the conversations your clients need so they can be confident and certain that they will succeed in improving their results. By unlocking firm commitments, you sell more effectively. If you seek efficiency increases, there may not be any better way than to unlock commitments and track your progress.