The MOST IMPORTANT Thing I Learned After 10 Years In Sales
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This might sound controversial, but if you're waiting until the very end of your calls with your buyers to attempt to close them, then you're doing it wrong. Sure, this traditional sales process of closing the sale at the end of your calls might work from time to time, but your deal closing rate overall would be significantly higher if you used the free CC.

Now, anyone who recommends closing at the end of a call or the end of the entirety of the deal cycle length, well, they're very likely an author who hasn't sold anything in the past decade. I, on the other hand, have taken over 2000 calls in the past five years at salesman.com and I've probably reviewed to this point tens of thousands of calls of our students, the members of salesman.com academy.

And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, the 3cc rule is used by every single high-performing seller that I work with. So unless you're happy with mediocre close rates, it's time to pay

So what is the free CC rule? Well, the free CC rule states that you must close the sale at least three times per call. And I want you to drill this into your brain because I want this to happen organically from this point moving forward. It's a minimum of three closes per call, every single call. Which then leads us to the question, how can I ask for the deal or the next meeting multiple times over without sounding weird?

And the answer to that question is, obviously, you don't. Instead of one big close at the end of the call in the traditional sales process, instead we're going to do what's called micro-closing throughout the entirety of the conversation. Because the thing is, when you have one big close at the end of the call, you've no idea from the start of the call until the end of the call, whether the buyer is on board with anything that you've communicated to them. Maybe they

are introverted or just very polite and they don't want to interrupt you to tell you that you've taken them down completely the wrong pathway. Maybe you tricked them on getting into the call in the first place and they're just staying as silent as possible so they can get the call over and done with as quick as possible and just ghost your ass moving forward so that they never speak to you.

And you see this all the time when you review CRM data. The salesperson has proclaimed to have a fantastic call. They covered all these things. And then there is no next action. There is nothing in the pipeline. And that prospect has just ghosted them. Absolutely, just completely ghosted them to hell.

So that's why we want to micro-close throughout the entirety of the call at least three times. Because when we're micro-closing throughout the call, if the buyer doesn't agree with the thing that you just micro-closed them on, you've got the chance to pivot. They'll give you feedback. They'll say, "Yeah, I'm not a good fit for this," or, "No, that isn't what I was looking for." It allows you to deal with objections. It allows you to even just take a step back on it and go review a point to help them further and deeper understand.

When you micro-close at least three, if not more times through the average sales conversation, you create clear next steps for the buyer so that they can progress down their own buyer's journey. And this is important, right? Because you know the buyer's journey. You've taken multiple buyers through it.

Very likely though, the buyer that you're engaging with at that moment in time on that specific deal, they've never bought this product or service before. They probably know what the end outcome is that they're trying to achieve, but they're not quite sure how to get that, which is why they're speaking to you in the first place, right? If they could just buy the tool, implement the change themselves, then they would have done so without having to drag a salesperson in, a team in, a software product in, a hardware product in to resolve this issue.

And outlining these steps and getting the buyer to agree on each one of these steps is important because if they don't know what the next step is, if they haven't agreed that they're going to move towards it, if they've not had the opportunity to give you feedback as to, "Hmm, that step might not be the right thing to move towards. It might be this instead."

If they don't have all this in place, they're going to be living in a cloud of uncertainty and nothing kills deals like uncertainty does. I've talked about this in many of our videos and it's in the book Seller Made Simple, which you can download from sales.com or you click the link below this video to grab a copy of this. But uncertainty kills what we call the buying temperature. You think of the buying temperature like this. You jump on a conversation with someone, they've booked a meeting, so they must have a little bit of buying temperature. They must be somewhat interested.

Your goal, essentially your only goal, is to increase the buying temperature to the point where it makes total complete sense for them to take action. And you can think of it another way around, right? All you're trying to do is increase the certainty in the deal until they go, okay, I'm certain this is going to give the outcome that I need in a cost-effective way or in a way that I'm going to have some kind of ROI on all of this implementation. And that's when people make a buying decision.

The benefit of microclosing here, throughout the entirety of the sales conversation, is that microclosing gives us such clear next steps that the prospect would feel like an idiot if they agree to this, then this, then this, and this. And at the end of the call, it's to book the next meeting or to get someone else involved or to even close the deal. They'd feel like an idiot to then say no, because they've agreed to the entire process up until that point.

So that's the 3C rule, that's why it works. The idea of microclosing reduces the cloud of uncertainty that the buyer is facing and increases buying temperature. But what is microclosing specifically? Microclosing is a really simple sales framework. Again, we cover this in the Selling Made Simple book, which you can find over at salesman.com or the link below. But microclosing reduces, it in fact eliminates the risk of rejection from closing the buyer.

And because there is no risk of rejection by using the micro-closing framework, you can use it over and over and over again without annoying the buyer or potentially hurting your ego. And the process is super simple, right? There are only really two steps. Step one is we're gonna ask the question, does it make sense to?

Does it make sense to get Carl on the phone tomorrow afternoon and we can progress the deal there? Does it make sense for you to give me this bit of information so I can see if we can deliver an ROI on the situation? Does it make sense to get started today?

That is it. So there's no shenanigans here. There's no weirdness. We're just asking very genuinely, does it make sense to do this next step of the process? And this works really well for a couple of reasons. First off, it relieves pressure from the buyer. It increases buying temperature because the inverse of this is adding pressure, which reduces buying temperature.

And it relieves pressure from the buyer because they're expecting to just plod along and then you to close them in a big, gross, horrible, old school, traditional sales closing way at the end of the call. And that doesn't happen. There's no tension. There's no build of tension and stress. The call just plods on. At the end of the call, they go, yeah, it

It does make sense to do this thing. As I mentioned previously in the video, it keeps the buyer on track throughout the entirety of the call, then multiple calls, then the entirety of the sales process. That then poses the question, what happens if a buyer says, "No, it's

it doesn't make sense to do that thing. In which case we go, okay, no worries. We're not stressed about it. There's no pressure. We just then allow the buyer to coach us on what the next step they think is for this deal to progress or for them to be qualified out or whatever the end outcome ends up being. So we're going to ask the question, what do we need to do to move this forward?

So if I jump on a call and I say to someone, "Okay, well, does it make sense to get signed up to salesman.com academy?" And they say, "No." I might go, "Okay, no worries." Well, thus far in the conversation, it seems like this is correct and this is going to work and you're going to get an ROI and we're going to deliver this in the first 24 hours of you working with us. What would it make sense to do to move this forward?

Nine times out of 10, it's can we have a payment plan or can I bring a team on board rather than just one person? Or is there a higher level of coaching than what you've shared with me in this quick conversation? Whatever it is, they're now going to give you that feedback loop so that then you ask the question again. Okay, well, if we give you a payment plan, would it make sense to get started

today. And if they say yes to that, fantastic. You've closed the deal. You've closed the conversation. You've micro-closed whatever you were trying to micro-close. If they turn around to you and say no again, then you go, okay, no worries. Fine.

"No, not a big deal. You told me that you didn't want to do a pay in full. You wanted to have a payment plan and that would have helped you get started. If that's not the bottleneck, what do we need to do to move this forward?" And then they'll tell you the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and it's polite and it's happy and there's no weird sales pressure or stress. They don't have this barrier up where they think that they're being bullied or manipulated using these old school and traditional sales techniques that most salespeople used in the past.

It's a friendly business adult conversation. And if you go through this loop enough times, they'll get to a point where they go, okay, there's nothing logical I can throw at this person now. It does make sense to move forward. And that's how you progress the deals with micro-closing. And something to remember here is that if the buyer says no to you, if they say no during a micro-close, they're not rejecting you as a person.

Of course, right? They don't even know you. It might be an enterprise deal that you're doing and this is the 17th meeting that you've had and you've flown out and you shook that person's hand multiple times.

and you know you've got another three months left of this deal cycle to get it over the line, but it's gonna make your career, it's gonna be a massive deal. If they say no to you during a micro-close in that 18th meeting, they're not rejecting you because they don't even know you as a person. They only know the avatar that you're playing in your sales role.

They're probably not even rejecting the deal itself either. All they're saying when you do the micro-closing consistently every single conversation that you have, all they're saying is no to the thing that you asked, does it make sense to do that? So this is a bit of a mindset shift, right?

Because if they say no, you just go, okay, no worries. Your ego isn't involved. You shouldn't feel offended. You shouldn't feel pissed off or annoyed. All you've got to do is loop back around. Okay, well, what would it make sense to do? And you do this over and over again. So you can remove the risk from closing the buy. You can remove that fear of rejection. All of that gets sucked away because you're just asking a series of logical questions. Again, like an adult to hopefully another adult. You're just trying to solve a business problem.

And when you think about closing like this, when you think about the entirety of the sales process like this, you can get rid of any doubts or weirdness or awkwardness you feel being a salesperson. Obviously, there's a stigma attached to being a salesperson in a lot of industries, especially if you're a used car salesperson, there's a lot of stigma. If you're like me in medical device sales, there is a lot less stigma.

But either way, all this can affect your confidence going into these conversations. So you want to remove that stigma and you just want to think of yourself as someone who facilitates a deal happening and you do that via micro-closing. So with that all said, let me give you a few examples of a couple of micro-closes that I might,

say communicates to someone if they jump on a salesman.com academy call, see if they're a good fit for our program. So I'll typically start the conversation with, okay, the way these calls usually go is, and then I'll outline how the calls go. Does that make sense for you? And if the person says no, I'll go, okay, well, what would it make sense for you to talk about to see if this is a good fit? And then they'll just tell you. This often happens with sales leadership. They don't want to go perhaps through, they should go through the process.

but maybe they feel like they don't want to go through what they see as the laborious process of a typical sales call that we run over at salesman.com. And so they go, "No, all I want to know is this, this and this." Solve that problem for them, answer those questions. Okay, I've answered those questions. Does it make sense to get started?

And so you can shrink and call them. You can shrink the cycle that's massively by just asking the person, hey, the way the process usually runs is this. Does it make sense for you? OK, so another micro close I might use on one of these calls, I might say something like, OK, so we'll run through all this at a high level on how it all works. But if we can help you find and close more deals in the next 30 days, do you think it makes sense to get started with salesman.com academy?

Now, if a prospect on a call says no to this question, then something's probably wrong, right? They're probably not qualified to do business with us or they're after something that we don't offer. Because all we do is help people find a closeable deal in the next 30 days or their money back. If they don't want that, then they're probably booked onto the wrong call with the wrong person at the wrong time. So again, you can quickly qualify with micro-closing as well. And I might ask a question like, does it make sense that we run through the numbers to see if you're going to get an ROI from working with us?

Again, there's no trick or weirdness or hack here. If I know that they are going to spend six grand and they're going to make a hundred grand in the next 12 months from working with us, it makes total logical sense for them to say, yes, let's get started. So that's the kind of information that I'm trying to uncover on these calls. And so I'm going to micro-close them by asking them that question. Does it make sense if we run through the numbers to see if you're going to get an ROI for working with us?

And that is it. That is like 20% of the content of my diagnosis calls or what is known as a discovery call. And then the follow-up calls that I do with prospects, whether it is for salesman.com academy or whether it's for our new AI sales systems integrations that we're doing as a done for you service over at salesman.com. All we're doing is give them the information, allow them to make a decision. If they say this doesn't work or this isn't the next step or something's wrong, we just follow back around and go, okay, well, what do you think is the next step?

over and over and over. If you're a B2B seller and you'd like to find and close more deals in the next 30 days with a simple selling process, then listen closely.

After interviewing a thousand sales experts on the world's most downloaded sales podcast, with data from over 14,000 sellers completing our sales code assessment, I've uncovered a step-by-step sales process that works so well that it's allowed me to help over 2,000 sellers beat their sales quotas whilst working less hours with less overwhelm and

far, far less stress. I've used the same process myself to build our training business to over a million dollars in revenue, selling many of the world's top brands like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Microsoft, or media sponsorships. So if it works for me, I know it can work for you.

In fact, I'm so confident that we can help you find and close more deals in the next 30 days. That if you qualify to work with us, I guarantee that you will find and close more deals in the next 30 days, or you can ask for your money back. It's really that simple. I've used the seller-made simple method to help over 2000 sellers smash their quotas and have generated over 262 million

million in personal bonuses and commissions since working with us. I've helped sellers like you not just fly past their sales quotas, but to do it consistently, confidently, and without feeling all salesy and slimy. The Seller Made Simple method works fast. It doesn't require you to grind out sales activities or make thousands upon thousands of boring,

cold calls. We will overhaul and simplify your entire sales process from value proposition to creating the reliable meeting booking machine to leveraging a closing framework that makes you rejection proof. Remember, we guarantee in writing that if you follow our process exactly, that you'll find and close more deals in the next 30 days or your money back. And if you don't, I will personally continue to work with you for free until you do find and close some more deals.

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