One tool that you can use to improve closing sales is a partnership plan. This is basically a document that lists out all of the steps that you and the prospect will take together leading up to the purchase and implementation of your product. Here is an example:
This sales tool is just a table with rows for the main tasks that need to be completed, with details for the due date, people involved, and the status for each task. To create a partnership plan, fill in this table with all of the details that you can think of and then either put this at the end of your presentation slide deck or at the end of your proposal. A good time to share this is at the end of your Presentation sales step by saying something like this:
If you would like to keep moving forward, this is what our partnership plan looks like. These are some of the steps that need to be taken between now and you getting up and running.
Based on what we discussed today, are you interested in moving forward with this plan?
If the prospect is hesitant to commit to the plan, you can decrease what you are asking for by only trying to get commitment on the next step in the plan with something like this:
OK, no problem at all. Do you have enough interest to move to the next step on this partnership plan?
Whether you are able to get commitment to the full plan or just the next step, you need to work with the prospect to finalize the partnership plan by making any needed additions or changes to the list of steps.
You can try to get the prospect to participate in that by asking this:
Great. Do these steps and time estimates look correct and acceptable to you?
Do you have anything that you want to add or change?
From there, work with the prospect to make any adjustments or additions in terms of adding or removing any steps, changing any dates, adding or changing any of the owners of certain tasks, etc.
This closing tool will serve two purposes for you. First, it is a great tool to use at the end of the Presentation sales step to close the prospect on committing to move forward and get his or her agreement on all of the required steps. The second thing this tool will help with is keeping the prospect accountable through all of the different steps that you need to go through. For example, if the prospect tries to delay a meeting until next month, you can point back to the partnership plan and say something like:
Sure, we can definitely delay the meeting. But according to our agreed upon partnership plan, you want to have the system implemented by January 1st, and if we delay the meeting to next month, that will likely impact your ability to be up and running by January 1st.
Do we need to change the target date of January 1st or do you want to try to meet earlier than next month so that you can still hit your go live date?