Are you really closing the Medical Sales Interview or Just Afraid?
Come on, we all know how to close the hiring medical sales manager for that sales job, right? After coaching sales representatives on how to close when I was a sales manager, and now as a recruiter, I have come to one conclusion: not all people know how to close a medical sales call or a job interview appropriately. What is even worse? Many sales people, after the right coaching, STILL FAIL TO CLOSE! Now what is that about? I call it the FEAR TO CLOSE PHOBIA (Closenophobia). Do you have it?
To do a self diagnosis as whether you have Closenophobia, you must first understand the definition of phobia as defined by Wikipedia; “The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject”. Yes, I firmly believe some people are afraid to close the sales call or an interview. Often I would get this response from a sales person or job candidate, ”I just didn’t want to ask and seem too pushy”. Worse, some candidates will tell me they THOUGHT THEY DID close the hiring manager and are shocked when I tell them the manager passed on them because ”they did not close” the interview!
Closenophobia is hard to self diagnosis. Let’s take Arachnophobia (fear of spiders), I don’t know one person who would have a difficult time knowing if they had THAT phobia! So what is it about Closenophobia that people just won’t admit to having or honestly, don’t understand they suffer from it? Granted, some people don’t have the fear, they just don’t know how to close and that can be resolved with practice. So let me share with you a quick self diagnosis tool for Closenophobia BEFORE we talk about the best way to close (because I have learned you won’t do it anyway if you have a fear to close, nope, no way!).
There is one STRONG test of whether your closing statement is really a close:
- did you ask a question that could only be answered in ONE WAY: evoking the only possible response of either a “Yes” or a “No”.
- Remember, each stage of the interview and what happens during each interview, dicatates what is considered an appropriate close, but bottom line your close must evoke only one type of response, a ”yes or no” from your interviewer.
So there is your quick diagnosis tool, are you asking those type of questions and if not why? Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Let’s go one more step in this process, because again, many people think they are closing when they are not!
I have many job candidates tell me the following after an interview, do they sound familiar?:
- ”yes, I closed the hiring manager. I told him I really, really was interested in his job and I hope he was moving me forward”.
- “yes, I closed him. I told him during the final interview that I really, really wanted this job and when could I expect to hear back from him”.
I will abruptly reply to the above responses with, “that is no close and he is hiring you to close clients to buy from you, if you can’t ask for the next step or the job and get a commitment with a Yes or No Closing Question….how in the world are you going to do that with your customer because that is much harder than asking for the next step in the interview process?”.
Sometimes these Job Candidates get lucky and are invited back for another interview KNOWING the hiring manager had concerns about their weak closing skills. Sure enough, they go back in after my CLOSE COACHING (some managers ask me to coach them to see if they are coach-able!) and almost always they fail again. They will tell me afterwards “it did not feel right to ask a Yes or No question to close, I felt like I was being rude”! Well, I HATE to be rude, but NO, you are not moving on to the next interview or NO you are not getting the job. What that person has is CLOSENOPHOBIA, yep they are a CLOSENOPHOBIAC (boy do I love making up new words!)!
Why do medical sales managers ask me to coach the close (besides knowing I was a medical sales Division Manager for years)? Hiring medical sales managers know that sales people either will close OR they will not close. After you train someone to close a sales call or interview and they are still not closing, than the manager knows the waters run very deep psychologically and this candidate will probably never change AND never have strong closing skills. Somewhere in their heads they are thinking that selling and then closing with “will you buy now” is rude to do. The Diagnosis? CLOSENOPHOBIA! So what is your self diagnosis? by Linda Hertz