Ironically, one of the greatest fears that many stagers have is asking for the business from a potential client. If you don’t ‘close’ the sale, you don’t have a business!
Some of the most common questions I hear from professional stagers revolves around the process of actually landing a new client. I hear things like “Christine, I have the leads on potential clients… but I can’t get them to commit.” Or “I send out several proposals each month, but it doesn’t seem that they actually say yes… why does that happen?”
Fortunately, this is a situation that has a solution. A quick tip: if you’re able to consistently generate quality leads, you are 95% of the way there! You just need a bit of help getting over the last hurdle and actually closing the business.
Here are four points to guide you in this process (each and every time!):
1) Listen and address concerns. Every client is different – they all have different needs and different concerns. So don’t think you can get away with using a “one size fits all” approach to closing the sale. It’s fine to use a template for your proposal but you need to customize what you write to reflect the specific needs of each client.
2) “Prove” your value by demonstrating the ROI your services provide. (ROI means Return On Investment) Reassure your potential clients of the value you provide by offering statistics that support and reflect the value of staging their home based on industry information. If you need help identifying some of these statistics, feel free to get in touch with me directly!
3) Use testimonials. Give your prospects confidence that others have worked with you and experienced positive success. Most people have a “group-think” mentality—they don’t want to be the first to try anything, but if others have done it and experienced positive results, it makes their decision and commitment easy! Throughout your marketing pieces, prominently feature testimonials from happy, satisfied clients —and remember to include them in your proposals too.
4) Make it easy for potential clients to say “yes!” Make life simple for your prospective clients—they already have enough on their mind, considering they are trying to sell their home. Don’t make them jump through hoops. Explain you will handle the details so that they don’t have to worry about them in clear and easy to read language.
So, set yourself up for success… prepare your marketing materials in advance, ask for the business using these four points and close more sales.
By the way, I love closing sales; my seven step proprietary process helps CSPs close more sales more often. I’d love to hear about your experiences with closing the sale… please drop me a line to let me know about them!
