How to Close on the First Appointment - Part 1 of 2

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning It Selling Podcast. I'm Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems, and with me as Professor's got plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute. And together we've launched a franchise sales pro with a commitment to work with franchise tours and franchisees to drive sales and boost revenue. Most sales people are trained to build rapport, gather information, and follow up later. But what if the prospect is ready today in service-based, in-home sales like home improvement, senior care, or children's services, the best clothes might happen at the first visit.

0:38 Do you want to be strong in influencing or persistent in follow up to make the sale? Join Bill and me as we break down how to close on the first appointment by building curiosity and interest, defining the buy criteria, uncovering motivation, and creating urgency to close the deal with confidence on Episode 692 of the Winning It Selling Podcast. That's great, Scott.

1:03 I'm looking forward to that conversation. It's not one that we've really addressed before, so it's something new for our listeners. But before we dive back into our book club, Scott has an announcement. Have you ever thought about running your own business? A franchise might be the perfect way to make that dream a reality. Think of it as a business and a box, with proven systems, brand recognition, and built in support.

1:25 If you're a skilled technician ready to explore entrepreneurship, or you're approaching retirement, but not ready to stop contributing, owning a franchise could be your next great chapter. It's a big decision with lots of moving parts, and doing it alone can lead to distractions and missed opportunities. That's why we work with experienced professionals who can guide you through the franchising journey. If you'd like to talk with someone, visit mnsales.com slash offers, complete the form, and we'll connect you with someone who can work with you to navigate the path to franchise ownership.

1:59 This is really having to do a lot with our franchise sales pro. We're talking with a lot of franchise people. And even your topic today, Scott, has really been brought on by the work we were doing with franchise owners in franchisees. So that's great. Let's get back into our book, Aligning Strategy and Sales by Frank Cespedus. We're on chapter seven. And this is in part three. So he has parts in the book. Part three is called performance management.

2:24 Chapter seven from sales task to selling behavior. And his key wording on this or his key quote is aligning selling behaviors with sales task is the essence of performance management and sales. So he sees this as being the most necessary thing. And here's the biggest challenge I have with this chapter. I read it three times. He's talking about sales task and selling behaviors. Sales task for you and I, as we understand them, are making calls, booking appointments, creating proposals, having a discovery meeting, those sorts of things.

2:54 Those are the tasks of the sales person. He never talks about those. So I don't know necessarily what tasks he's talking about. And then he talks about behaviors, selling behaviors, but almost all the behaviors he talks about is buying behaviors. So Frank and I have a little bit of a disconnect here, but that doesn't make this chapter unimportant. He has some very important things, especially talking about the ideal customer profile.

3:19 That's where everything is going to hinge for him is on the ideal customer profile. And what he's really, I think, going to say at the end, Scott, is the task and behaviors change based on this ideal customer profile. Is that what you got out of it? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And I think that that's one of the most important steps is the ideal customer profile. Who are you selling to? Right. And so that will change how you sell.

3:44 And remember, he talked about the different kind of salespeople in the last chapter that Scott covered. So those different selling styles can have a lot to do. And Scott's conversation later today, later in this episode about selling on the first appointment, well, that's going to have a lot to do with that buying behavior. So we need to address that. So part A is called beating the devil, scaling a sales process. You can't grow if your sales don't increase.

4:11 And so a common issue is a poorly defined ideal customer profile. He uses ICP a lot. So get ready for that acronym. If you don't know what your best customer looks like, it's hard to distinguish them from the crowd. And you and I've talked about this before, right? The good news is everybody's a customer. The bad news is everybody's a potential customer. So defining that customer profile is going to indicate your sales process.

4:38 And then also as Scott's going to talk about when's the best time to close them. So he's going to get into that. This next part is called understanding customers and required selling behaviors. And so there can be a big gap between what a customer says is the buying motive and what actually drove the decision. So this is where he gets into these customer behaviors a lot, not selling behaviors, customer behaviors, but it's good to know what our customer behaviors are.

5:07 So how do people make choices? What kind of information do they need? Customers can be confused or deceptive in these studies he's talking about that show what issues are really important. So this goes back to what Scott and I've always taught you. You got to design questions to bring out what the real buying behaviors are. You can't go in there and say, so tell me why you want this and get really an honest answer. So your question set that you ask is going to be really important.

5:35 The next area he talks about is buyer reluctance. I think this is an area where Scott has particular knowledge and uses it really well in our appointment. So Scott, you talk about the need to help them understand the cost of doing nothing in this buyer reluctance. Yeah, I think our biggest competition is in action and people doing nothing. He talks a little bit about lost aversion in the book. And when we have lost aversion, we're comparing something against another thing.

5:59 So what is buying it going to give us and what is not buying it going to give us because both of them are decisions about whether to buy or not. This is where you do nothing is a decision. Yeah, it is. So what do you try to focus on? How do you try to help customers see the value or what they lose if they don't do something now? I like to use a Covey technique which is bring the future to the present saying, how do you think it would look in a year from now if you don't make the decision like this today or in six months from now?

6:29 Or what are the things that are going to happen if you don't make the decision to move forward with this particular item that we're talking about in the future? And when you can kind of play out the role of not buying something against buying it, you're going to get a different outcome in the future just in which you anticipate and what you look forward to. And I think having a solution reduces your stress going into the future too by having a good solution.

6:51 Absolutely. Absolutely. And I do think that he talks a number of times about FUD, fear uncertainty and doubt. And this is a great place to bring that in. If you don't do something, there are challenges that you can challenge that you're going to run into. So I think the other thing too is we don't always understand what the customer values. And this has got to be part of our questioning set. We've got to find out what's important to them or we can't, we're going to sell on the wrong thing.

7:18 And then also he did talk about customers who don't value what you value. And I think that's important to understand if you sell something, if you get really good at selling and you sell your product or service to somebody who doesn't value what you value, what are you going to sell? Trouble. Yeah. You're going to need to trouble later. Especially if it's a relationship sale and not a transaction. Yeah, because every time you say, hey, we do this, they're like, well, we don't care.

7:47 That's what we do really well. But what am I going to do now? You bought and now you don't like anything I'm giving you. So that's trouble. All right. Part C developing an ideal customer profile. This is about four or five pages. So I'm not going to try and go into this. I'll just hit the highlights here. This is something you got to sit down and do, right? Scott. Yeah. We can't advise you on who your ideal customer is.

8:10 Look at the current customer data. Who's buying from you now? Who is the easiest to work with? Who was the easiest sale to make? Why do they buy from you and why do they keep buying from you? That's really crucial. So from that data, number two, develop a preliminary hypothesis. Okay. Here's who I think my customer is. So one of the things Scott and I did with the franchise, as we looked at different types of franchises, we thought, well, okay, a beauty salon.

8:38 Yeah, they do some selling, but it's not our kind of selling necessarily. We could probably teach them something, but it's not a real key. Who does it? Oh, home service companies, drywall, painting, window washing. When you're going to walk into a homeowner and you're going to say, I can do that for you. I'm going to say to quote landscaping is another one we've worked extensively with. I'm going to have to create some kind of a proposal or quote and then get that back to you.

9:06 And this is why Scott's going to talk about closing on the first appointment is important because someone's going to might be coming. I think, you know, who's here to get three bids, right? Get three bids. So I might have another window company coming in in two hours. If I don't close them now, somebody else might close them before I get a chance to get back to them. Number three, as you're using that refine and modify that hypothesis, talk to other people in your organization, sales and marketing.

9:36 Let's focus this ICP more specifically on maybe the size of the company, maybe window cleaning isn't ours, but window replacement is something that's really good because it's a big enough deal. And then his number four is from ideas to action. When you've really nailed down that ideal customer profile, start to do your business based on that start to do your marketing based on that start to do your phone calls based on that.

10:03 And he's got a great example of a company that started to focus in on CPAs and that really made the difference from because the leads they got. So I think that's really crucial. Any thoughts on the ideal customer profile? Scott, I'm going through this pretty quick. So no, no, I think it's an important step. And I think it's introducing the topic for future consideration of our listeners. So I think it's along with the unique selling proposition.

10:28 I mean, the two of them go together so perfectly when maybe you need to cover another episode on that in the future. And as an individual salesperson, you can do this. You don't need to wait for your company to do this. You can do this as an individual salesperson. And say, look who's buying from me. Who do I relate with the best? Let's look at my territory and how many of those companies can I find that I can work with more effectively.

10:50 All right, point D, the big part of it, the ending from selling behaviors to performance management. So now you use this ICP to develop your value drivers. What's valuable to this particular person that buys, really understand what they value and start to have conversations about those. And then also what is your selling behavior, meaning who are you calling on? That's what he talks about is selling behaviors. Who are you calling on and what's the message that you're giving to them?

11:17 And I think those are important selling behaviors. So any final thoughts from you, Scott? No, these are some meaty chapters. They're important chapters. And I think once we get through the book, we'll see the context of why this is so relevant in sales. Well, I think also Frank is talking from the level of the sales leader, the vice president of sales, the vice president of marketing, the CEO of the company from their standpoint.

11:40 But we need to figure out how we're going to make this useful. If my company doesn't make any changes, I can still make changes. Right. So how am I going to do this? Great. Next week, no book club. We've got a guest, but be ready for the week after that. We're going to still be in aligning strategy and sales. And we're going to be on chapter eight. Before we get into the topic today, we have another announcement. Do you have the right people on the bus and in the right seats?

12:04 That's always the first step before investing in training because sometimes it's not about more training. It's about finding the right people first. If you're looking to build your team for 2026 to bring in folks who can hit your activity goals and drive the results you want, it might be time to talk with a recruiter. Just head over to mnsales.com slash offers and check the box to connect with a professional recruiter.

12:28 There's no obligation, just a conversation. And if you'd like us to introduce you to someone who can find the right candidates for your team, fill out the short form and we'll be in touch. Invest in your people, invest in your future. Visit mnsales.com slash offers today. Thanks, Bill. Our topic today is how to close on the first appointment. Some say that 70% of sales are closed on the first visit. And if a second appointment is required, the chance of closing drops by 50%.

12:58 Or you're investing in a strong follow up plan attempting to close afterwards, which may require five or more touches. As we open this episode, we talked about we're concentrating on the in-home service-based businesses, the home improvement, Bill brought up the drywall or the landscaping or somebody that wants to remodel a kitchen. So a business of consumer versus maybe a business to business? There's still some B2B's that I think can be done.

13:27 And our listeners will be able to know if our techniques can be used in their business. And when I say the best closed commitments, you know, might happen on the first visit, the first appointment. So you can really decide, do you want to be strong in influencing? Or do you want to be persistent and follow up to make a sale? And there's some companies that really concentrate on follow up. They do it really, really well.

13:49 And between the first appointment and the follow up, they end up having a very high closing ratio. But sometimes it's possible if we're asking the right question, sharing the right information on the first appointment to be able to get that commitment out of our customer, a prospect at the beginning. But I think- To merge what we just learned in our book and what you're talking about, Scott, I want to bring up Frank Betcher's, How I Raise Myself for you to Success.

14:12 And if you remember, he was failing and he decided to analyze what he was doing. And he discovered that he made the sale on the first or second call. It was either the first appointment or he closed them on the first follow up. And that was 80 to 90% of his sales. And then third follow up to 200th follow up, he got the other 10 or 15%. But that was taking up most of his time. And he made a decision to only do, if I remember right, two or three follow ups, that was it.

14:43 The initial appointment, one or two follow ups. And his sales went through the roof because he quit wasting time trying to chase something that wasn't excited. And it really made a difference. So I think that's an understanding too of where you close most often and what you can do. So I think it'll tie in really well to what you're talking about. Well, talking about the ideal customer profile. And we'll talk a little bit later about what information do you get before the appointment to qualify them.

15:12 If you really apply both of them, your closing ratio is going to go up significantly, your sale cycle is going to be compressed. And you're going to be more profitable in the long run when all of that comes together. But talking with a consumer, I remember when we were working with a landscape company, one of the issues was the difference between what they thought, what the homeowner thought it was going to cost and what the real cost was.

15:34 And we taught them to ask about that. What do you think this is going to cost? What kind of budget do you have early on in the process? And if it was like a $20,000 difference, we're not going to spend a whole lot of time on follow up on this one. It's like, okay, well, let's get them an idea. This is going to cost $5,000. It's going to cost $25,000. Let's talk about that early. If they're running away from you, it's probably not worth even doing the proposal.

16:02 Right? They're still talking to you. Hopefully you're going to give them a reason to find the money. I know you think that you're going to find this budget, but I don't think you're going to find a five-time increase in the budget. You're an optimist. Again, I have to go back to Frank Betchers. If you can't close them, it may be time to move on. You may be able to move them from $5,000 to $25,000. But chances are better, they're going to say, I'll do it myself.

16:27 I think Frank brings up a very good point. I think that's debriefing your activities and your results to figure out what's the best form of activities to build being most profitable. All right. I'm going to quit interrupting you. That's all right. I want to build up. Just build some context as to a sales process. There's a lot of different processes. I use this one just as a generic process. We start off with step one is create interest.

16:54 Step two is understanding expectations. Step three is exchange information. Step four is to outline priorities. Step five is to determine options and then step six is to confirm commitment. I'll have a PDF of today's show. If you go to our show notes, you can download that PDF. Those six steps are listed there along with everything else that I'll be sharing today. Within that sales process, we need to start with a mindset.

17:23 How does your mindset show up in your attitude, your approach, your body language? Your tone. How are your listening skills today? Because they need to be really, really good. When you walk out of appointment and you spend a lot of energy listening, you're a little tired because there's a little bit of work in active listening and really paying attention to the intent behind the content and to be able to understand what those expectations are when you're exchanging information.

17:50 Another is what is the goal of your appointment? When you're showing up for that first appointment, what is the goal? I would submit to you that my goal is to bring the reason to buy today to the surface. People buy emotionally, they justify it intellectually. If we can find the emotion to motivate them to find the intellectual reason and justify it, we have a higher chance of closing that sale. We need to be able to bring that reason to the surface for both of us to understand what it is.

18:23 This is where I like the difference between working with somebody and helping somebody. I'm a very strong proponent of working with them. When you work with them, they feel comfortable sharing information and they don't feel like you're trying to help them in a way where they want to maintain control. Information is so important when you're working with somebody to be able to give them what they want and what they need and what they're looking for.

18:45 How important mindset, Bill, do you think it is when you're getting into a new situation that you're unfamiliar with and you still have to be focused on what you rehearsed? I think that it always gets you back on track. This is why I designed my questions before I get there because as I have conversations, I know the customer, the prospect is going to go in different directions. That's okay, but I want to be able to bring them back.

19:08 I think the same is true for your mindset. If you go in there thinking, okay, I need to create the proposal and talk with them right away about this so I can get this commitment and get this close today. That's a very different mindset than I have in working business to business when I always go in there saying, okay, I'm here to collect information today and my close is going to be, let's find an appointment where I can bring a proposal back to a working document.

19:33 We can work through that and I think that increases the value of what I have, but I don't find myself in situations where I have to close. That would be a change in mindset for me. The next thing that we need to consider when we're representing a company is what's the company's reputation? What are we known for? What is our unique selling proposition? Are we scalable, compatible? Do we sell on building a community of people and customers that get together?

20:04 I remember how loyal Saturn owners were when the Saturn car was really popular. Peloton, when they were selling pelotons, you were selling a community of people getting together. Then also, is what you're selling transferable. If you're doing home remodeling and you're saying, this has a lifetime guarantee for as long as the property is still standing, it's transferable to owner to owner. That's a reputation that a company has when they're providing a service.

20:30 I think another thing that we need to think about, this is based on Frank's book on the last chapter, is do we want to make it for less and sell on price? Or do we want to sell it for more and sell on value? What path are we going to take? That's going to determine what kind of customer we're going to attract. I watch late night TV and I see these gutter commercials. It's like, if you call today, we'll give you $500 off and we'll give you $200 with a quote and we'll give you $50 if you commit today.

21:00 It's like, who's really paying for sales training here? We're turning our own product into a commodity by discounting it before we even show up for an appointment. That's the company's reputation and that's how they sell. I don't know. Customers like buying on that, but I see a tremendous loss in value when we're discounting before we ever show up. I think they're trying to break through that clutter to get somebody to call them.

21:21 Yeah, they are. They're looking for that hook that says, okay, if you do this today and that's a well-worn process of selling. Their sales process, once you get them there, who knows what that looks like? But I think that you're getting into the difference between marketing and sales. Yeah, well, it's creating interest, but it's also drawing a certain expectation that the prospect has before the seller, the salesperson, ever shows up.

21:46 My assumption is they raised the price by $500 so they can discount it by $500. It's like the nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel, wine bottle sale. By the first bottle at full price, you get the second one for a nickel. Okay, I think I know how that works. So the point of this is that you know who you are. Listen, I was in the Columbia Record Club for years. I know how that program works. I got my 15 free and then I had to pay $90 a record for the next 10.

22:12 Exactly. And they followed up too. So the next step is getting into the discovery. So what information do you know before the appointment? What information? No, before the appointment. So you probably have the name, the address, the day, the time of the appointment, et cetera. Is this a good chance and time to learn a little bit more about the prospect beforehand? Can we improve our qualification process? I mean, what are they really excited about before you arrive?

22:42 And then what are they looking forward to solving and achieving after you leave? What how are we building up the excitement with the prospect to be able to have them not cancel the appointment, to have them show up and they're curious and interested. And we have information that they want. So they're going to share information with us that we need and really work on that qualification process before we before we show up.

23:07 And then one of the things we learned, Scott, was in like the landscape company and the drywall companies that we worked with, they do call and all they call for is to confirm the appointment. Hey, Larry, this is Bob from John's drywall company. I just want to confirm I'm going to be there at two o'clock and you're going to be there. And that's good. But the next step would be now, tell me, tell me a little bit about the project.

23:29 So I understand a little bit, tell me a little bit, then you have a budget involved and, you know, if you can find it, what do you have something coming up? You have a three or four questions you can ask during that call and do what you're talking about. Start to create that excitement now and learn a little bit about that customer's needs. Yeah. Yeah. And build that excitement, you know, before you even arrive. So you think about what information do you want to know during the appointments?

23:52 And my honest, I'm going to separate into two areas. One is the facts and the other ones are the feelings. So when we get into the facts, we're talking about the specifications. What is the criteria? How many rooms? How many do you want to order? What sizes? Whatever it is. What's the timeline? When do we want to have it completed? What's the completed by date? And when we know that, we need to work our way backwards to create urgency today to be able to meet that timeline and that date deadline in the future.

24:19 Budget, let's talk about budget, you know, when we first start talking with them so that we know what their expectations and what they perceive this is going to be priced at. And then I, how long do you plan on living there? I was working with a salesperson that was selling windows and they spent three hours with this one prospect. They did an interview, they looked at the house, they did some brief measurements and the prospect said, you know, we're just not interested in doing this right now.

24:48 And the salesperson, persistent, persistent, persistent went out into the car, did drawings, came back, here's the drawings of what the window and they never asked how long you plan to live in the house. So that makes a difference because if you're going to invest in something, you want to be able to enjoy it. Or if you're investing in it so that you can get a resale value, maybe you're going to make money on it because if you try to sell the house with the old windows, you're not going to make as much.

25:11 So you want to put new windows in. So how long do you plan on living there? Get into the future as to how long people are going to plan on using something. Then it starts to spread that price over time and then they think it reduces the cost because it's amortized over time and it's easier to put that into a budget. And then the next section is the motivation. So this is the feelings. Let's talk about what are the past experiences and the current expectations.

25:37 There may be some misconceptions or some skepticism that we're working with on the prospect. What trends is the prospect seeing in the marketplace? They caught their attention. Tell us about it. Are you looking through some magazines? Are you seeing pictures of projects that are done? What what what what? What's your attention here? What is your desired outcome? How do you how do you want to feel when this is over with?

25:59 What are the options other options that you're considering? Are you thinking about doing it yourself or are you going to think about hiring other companies to do it? And what if any competing projects or distractions are there that are going to interfere with what you want to sell and what they want to buy today? Because if they've got other priorities that are higher than yours and you don't know about them, you're competing against something that you don't know anything about.

26:24 And I love the question why now? What was the preceding reasons? What happened last week that caused them to look at the options this week? What happened the day before? Why why why don't they want to wait? And and now is the time to really create that urgency when we're talking with somebody and we're getting them emotionally excited about the outcome and the possibilities. And in every organization we worked with Scott, they didn't ask any questions in this area.

26:53 Exactly. This was the area where they just said, oh, well, they know why they want to buy. And they they focused on was the measurements and the timing and those sorts of things. The specifications, the facts and they didn't really deal with the feelings. I feel like I'm about halfway through this topic, Bill, and maybe we should pick it up at another episode and we can have part one and part two. That would be great because I think I really want to find out how to close and this is not something that we do.

27:20 So let's leave it here as a part one and we'll do next week will week after after Chris comes will do this as a part two. Sounds like more than. All right, super. Scott is going to put on the on the show page. Seven steps to close in the first meeting a PDF for you there. So look for it. And then my golden nugget for today is pay any price to stay in the presence of extraordinary people. That's by Mike Murdock who is an author.

27:51 Pay any price to stay in the presence of extraordinary people. That's why I started working with Scott. That's why I keep very careful. Thank you very much. Everything we'll talk about is that winning at selling.com. So look for the show notes there and that downloadable PDF next week. No book club because our guest is Dr. Chris Croner. He's going to talk about the characteristics of salespeople with drive. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media.

28:18 And if you're so inclined, give us a five star review. This is episode 692. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.