When I started my sales career it was with a well-known Financial Services organisation who shall be nameless. My manager, who I can now see was the cliché of the crooked salesman, was much worse and delighted in teaching his team of young, inexperienced sales people how to close.
I can’t remember all the names now of the closes, but I think it says something that the closing techniques all had quite combative names. For example, there was ‘the double arm lock’, ‘the right angle’ and a particularly unpalatable one that my boss loved where he would fill out an application form and then tip his clipboard towards the potential customer, allowing his pen to roll towards them – the idea being that they would pick up and sign. Yes really!
Young as I was, I could sense that these closes that seemed to relate more to a wrestling match than helping people choose the right sort of life assurance! Moreover, they seemed designed to ‘trick’ people into signing up, which probably explains why the cancellation rate in our team was so high. It also went some way to explaining why I felt so uneasy about working there. I left, miserable at the situation. It was only later, when I had been on some really good sales training that I was able to understand exactly what the problem was.
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