Closing and Writing the Deal

ByBrandon Thomas

When you’ve run a real process, the close is just asking for the decision — the high-pressure “hard close” is what you resort to when you skipped the process, and it’s exactly what makes customers distrust salespeople.

Read the signals and ask

The signals that count are ownership language (“where would I put the second remote,” “would this pull my ripper”), logistics questions (delivery, how the trade works), bringing the spouse, asking about financing specifics. Idle feature curiosity isn’t readiness. Seeing the real signals, ask directly: “ready to get this ordered?” The most-skipped close is simply asking for the sale.

Figure 1: From agreement to a working order

Write it complete, because a small error travels far

The written deal is the order the whole dealership acts on. What gets forgotten and what it causes: the exact configuration (wrong machine ordered or prepped), the trade payoff and lien (numbers wrong, financing stalls), freight/setup/delivery terms (a fight at delivery), taxes and fees, who’s on the title (a real headache to unwind), the deposit, a realistic delivery date. A sloppy deal detonates into financing delays, warranty-registration problems, wrong orders, and blown deliveries — and gets sent back to correct.

Never promise what another department delivers

Before it goes in writing, check with the owner: a delivery date (service shop load, parts availability — the number-one cause of delivery blowups), that it’ll do a specific job or pull a specific implement, a repair timeline, warranty coverage, a price nobody approved. A clean deal and clean handoff separate the salesperson everyone wants to work with from the one they dread.

Where it goes wrong

  • Reaching for pressure instead of a process that makes closing natural.
  • Talking past the close or waiting for the customer to volunteer it.
  • Writing a vague deal that gets sent back and delays everything.
  • Committing a date, spec, or warranty another department has to deliver.

Related

The departments and the handoffs · How a sale becomes a delivery · Delivery day · Ethics.

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