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How to Improve "Close"
How to Improve "Close"

Actionable advice on how to iterate and improve your "Close" performance - one of the 7 strategies for growth.

Jessica Nash avatar
Written by Jessica Nash
Updated this week

šŸ’” Get an introduction to the Growth Engine and the full glossary of terms here.

What is the "Close" Growth Strategy?

Close is one of seven growth strategies that make up the Growth Model.

Your "Close" Performance

The ā€œCloseā€ growth strategy is the key to converting customers from prospects to fully-fledged customers. This stage of the Growth Model is essential as it can make or break the efficacy of your Sales process. Use the Growth Engine to calculate whether youā€™re moving enough of your prospects through to the ā€œCloseā€ stage.

How is "Close" performance calculated?

Your "Close" performance is based on the number of Opportunities you're converting into successful closed deals. The formula used to calculate your ā€œCloseā€ performance is:

Number of closed Opportunities/total number of sales Opportunitiesā€‹ x 100

To represent your data as a comparable trend over time, we've used trailing twelve months (TTM) (a period consisting of data for twelve consecutive months), so that every period is comparable and contains an instance of every month. This is done to reduce effects of seasonality in the metrics. TTM analysis is the clearest way to see true trends in velocity accounting for seasonal variances in December, summer vs. winter, bank holidays etc. It clearly illustrates whether you're successfully accelerating the velocity - are you generating more Enquiries in a period, or is your velocity static or even falling?

Whether you need to reverse a falling trend, bump up a static trend, or accelerate an already upward trending velocity, keep reading for great strategies, advice, hints & tips.

Ways to improve your "Close" performance

There are two big tried and tested ways to improve close rates; by cross-pollenating sales team success (i.e., benchmarking results across the team and repeating what works), and by making it easy for customers to self-serve placing orders.

Create a ā€œBest Practiceā€ Guide

A best practice guide creates a roadmap for your Sales team to follow. Creating a ā€œBest Practiceā€ Guide equips your Sales team with actionable tasks and guidelines to support them in navigating complex Sales situations.

For new employees, the guide acts as their primary source of information regarding the Sales process. An experienced employee will use the guide to refer to as and when they require more knowledge. As all members of the team use the document, it ensures that a consistent process is followed across the company and leads to a better customer experience overall. The guide also offers other departments guidance in aligning their work alongside your Sales team.

What to Include in your Guide:

  • Include a product guide featuring what you sell, wholesale/retail prices, common issues and queries, and the returns policy

    • Use diagrams and highlight or bold key information

    • If you have a physical store, include any store locations, or include a site map if based online

    • Identify and state the Sales Model that best represents your business

  • Outline your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), listing their key characteristics such as Age, Profession, Income etc.

  • Build out each stage of your Sales Process

    • Note: At first this task may seem daunting, but starting with a basic outline before fleshing it out will help you establish a clear and concise plan

  • Explain the ā€œWhy?ā€ ā€“ Providing a brief company history and mission statement is a great start to motivate your team and help them understand how their individual actions affect the wider company

  • If your team is based across different locations or works on commission, itā€™s worth mentioning the responsibilities of different team members and specifying travel, expenses, and commission policies

Drive more Sales by updating the guide to reflect the dynamic Sales market and ironing out any previous snags to create a foolproof manual. Adjusting the guide enables you to tweak your process to be the most efficient version and ultimately boost your ā€œCloseā€ strategy.

ā­ Action: Outline a strategy to drive sales and continue to amend it based on its efficacy.

Customise your Quote Templates to maximise win rates

Modifying your templates to match the requirements of your business is a great way to boost your Close performance. Using branded visuals can increase the appeal as well as the quality of your documents. Incorporating other personalisation can also be effective, like adding client logos and relevant pricing adjustments. Differentiate from the herd by saving customised templates to use quickly, without needing to amend each communication.

ā­ Action: Create a Template and customise it to suit your business.

Set up an optimised Quote-to-Order Workflow

A Quote-to-Order Workflow helps you create a repeatable, scalable and profitable sales motion that helps you grow your business, deliver a great customer experience and makes staff happier and more productive.

An optimal Quote-to-Order Workflow is essential for three key reasons:

  1. Allows you to define, implement & test a repeatable process that works

  2. Gets everyone working in the same way, with enforced consistency & success

  3. Admin tasks are more efficient, helping you reduce overhead costs (& errors) per order

ā­ Action: Check out our guide on optimising your Quote-to-Order Workflow.

Create a branded Customer Portal

The Customer Portal allows you to personalise quotes to your companies unique branding. Our step-by-step guide shows you how to amend the colours on your quotes using HEX codes and how to upload your brand logo. Choose both primary and secondary brand colours in order to create a recognisable document.

ā­ Action: Set up company branding on your Customer Portal.

Add "Accept/Decline" buttons to emails/quotes to speed up order taking

Avoid ambiguity and get quicker, simpler confirmation from customers to take orders faster and streamline the process for your customers. Ensure that the buttons are prominently displayed in branded colours and easily accessible from any device to foster a seamless user experience.

ā­ Action: Learn how to add buttons to your Workflow.

Start taking payments online

Enhance your customer experience by setting up a payment integration. Allowing customers to enter card details online is much more secure, and less of an interruption than a phone call chasing for card details.

ā­ Action: Set up integration to Stripe, then learn how to start taking payments as part of your Quote-to-Order Workflow.

Automate order confirmations for sales efficiency

Instead of manually emailing customers to confirm their order has been placed, why not set up automated "Order Confirmed" emails? Not only will it save time and effort for your team, but it'll standardise the messaging, branding, and overall process.

ā­ Action: Create a standard "Order Confirmed" email, then set it up to send automatically after an order's been placed.

Supercharge sales results with the Sales Manager Dashboard

Get a 360Ā° view of your Sales performance, team performance, and projected results using the Sales Manager Dashboard. This Dashboard gives you a high-level view of your close rate and your lost Opportunities, so you can really deep-dive into your wins and losses to then share best practice across your whole Sales team.

ā­ Action: Check out your Sales Manager Dashboard, paying particular attention to the "Closed Deals" and "Lost Opportunities" tiles.


āž”ļø Next, take a look at our guide on how to improve "Onboard".

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