The art of asking: 8 lines to help you actually ask for the sale

You’ve got a call to action on the e-newsletters you send to your customers.

You’ve got ‘request a quote’ forms on your website.

And you have plenty of ‘contact us’ links.

But are you actually asking for the sale? More importantly – does your sales team ask for the sale?

Plenty of customer interaction happens outside of the marketing department. Whilst we’d all like to think we don’t operate in silos, there’s often friction between sales and marketing teams that can range from subtle to extreme carpet burn level.

This leads to silos and to sales reps operating in isolation. So what are they sending to customers and how are they asking for the sale?

Here’s what you can do to really prompt customers to act: ask for the sale!

Copy this list.

Paste it into an email.

Ask your sales team (nicely) to work on finishing every email with a question.

• ‘What are your thoughts on this?’
• ‘When would you like to make a start?’
• ‘When can I expect to hear back from you?’
• ‘Does this interest you?’
• ‘What else can I provide to help you make a decision?’
• ‘Would you like me to make contact with someone else to explain the offering?’
• ‘How many can I put you down for?’
• ‘Can I send you a quote?’

You’re not telling them how to do their job: this is marketing. If the order isn’t in your hot little hands, marketing teams still need to be heavily involved in nurturing customers along the path to purchase. If your product is highly engineered or extra complicated, this is even more important.

Providing a prompt for your customers to respond encourages a two way conversation and deepens the relationship.

And your team will agree that sales is all about relationships!