You have now given your customer a couple of benefits that your product offers, so is the customer ready to buy?

Now is the time to test the waters and see if your customer is ready to make that purchasing decision by doing a trial close. A trial close has nothing to do with the courts, it is just a question or a statement that allows you to see if your customer is ready to say yes to what you are selling.

Now I know many small business owners reading this may not come from a sales background and may think by doing this you are being too pushy but your not. You are just finding out if you have hit the right hot button and caused that makes the customer ready to buy.

Some salespeople will continue on rambling about everything the product does and the customer is ready to buy but when the salesman decides to keep talking will instead go shopping somewhere else.

Going back to the printer customer, lets say that you have given the customer a couple of benefits of the product so lets do a trail close and see if they are ready.

Here are a couple of examples:

"This printer will save you money due to lower cost per page. Now I have USB cables in six and ten foot lengths, which one would you like?"

"This takes the number 15 toner, would you like an additional toner with your printer today".

If you have done a good job of meeting the needs of the customer then they will say, give me a six foot one, or I don't need an extra toner today.

Other times the customer will just say they have a few more questions, and then go from there.

What it all comes down to is not talking too much. Find out if the customer is ready to buy and sell them what they want.

Once again a great reference for sales is the Sales and Sales Management Blog.