The Ultimatum Close
By Brian Tracy

A variation of the authorization close is the Ultimatum Close. You use this when you have been going back and forth with the prospect for some time. You have invested a lot of time and effort with this prospect and you don't want to lose it, but the prospect will not say "yes" and he will not say "no." You need to get a resolution so that you can either close the sale or get onto other prospects who represent greater opportunities to sell.
 

To use this closing method, you call the prospect, whom you have seen several times, and arrange to see him once again. When you arrive, you sit down and say these words, "Mr. Prospect, I know how busy you are. We've been talking about this product for some time now, and either it's a good idea for you, or it's not. If it's a good idea, we need to make a decision right now and get on with it. And if it's not a good idea, your time is too valuable for us to continue talking about it. If you’ll just authorize this, we’ll get started on it right away.”

Push the completed sales contract across the desk, lay your pen on top of the contract next to the check mark, smile and sit perfectly silently. This technique has about a 60 percent likelihood of working. Sixty percent of the time you use it, the prospect will eventually sign the contract and buy the product. But you must sit silently and be patient.

In the other 40 percent of cases, the prospect will push the contract back, say that he has decided not to buy it after all, and end the discussion. In either case, the discussion is over and you can get on with the rest of your sales activities.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, prepare thoroughly in advance to use the ultimatum close. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by using it skillfully.

Second, always remember that customers need help getting through the stress and tension of the final buying decision.

This is your job as a sales professional.

Email Marketing Helps Build Customer Relationships

When it comes to, not only, developing ongoing relationships with your customers but also marketing to them, putting together an email marketing strategy is what many companies choose to do. Not only are email marketing campaigns relatively inexpensive compared to other marketing alternatives, such as television or billboard advertising, but it is also one of the most useful strategies. 

By using an email marketing Software program to carry out your campaign, you'll enjoy a reach to, not only, your existing customers but also to leads whom you haven't met that could turn into your customers.

The name of the game when it comes to using an email marketing Software for your marketing campaign is conversions. The higher your conversion rate of fresh leads, the more profit and revenues you'll realize. The problem, then, lies within how to exactly turn your fresh leads into paying customers.

Developing a Relationship

The first thing you should realize when starting an email marketing strategy is that you should be developing a relationship with your customers before hitting them with any sort of advertising or promotions. It takes an average of seven email messages sent to each member on a list in your email marketing Software before anyone will buy from you. Once you reach the magic number of seven, the chances for purchases from each individual member increases exponentially.

So the question becomes what you do and say during the first five to seven messages you send out with your email marketing Software. You can think about this as the "honeymoon" period for the relationship between you and your fresh leads, but no matter how you spin it, these first few emails are a trial period for your subscribers.

During this trial period, you need to offer valuable information. Consider sending messages through your email marketing Software that include "top ten" lists of important things your subscribers should know. Make your email marketing messages seem like staying a list member is worth pure gold to them by giving solid information about solutions to your subscribers' problems 

Marketing and Advertising

After you've developed your email marketing relationship with your customers and leads, you can begin to market and advertise. Sending out product endorsements, affiliate marketing links, and new product announcements is a good way to get started.

However, you want to be careful so that you don't flood your subscriber list with email messages every other day. Using your email marketing Software, you can accurately time the sending of your emails to be sent weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly. Even after you send you promotions and sales messages, though, you still want to nurture the relationship between you and your customers by sending free valuable information that your subscribers cannot get elsewhere.

The entire email marketing process, used in conjunction with your email marketing Software program, should help you create and manage a successful campaign from start to finish. There are many programs today that make creating email marketing campaigns extremely user-friendly so that you can focus more on developing successful marketing campaigns and less on the technical side of things.

Keep in mind that you probably won't become an email marketing guru over night. But, the sooner you start, the sooner you can begin building this new skill and your marketing mix and really realize some big benefits.