I was with my Mother on Sunday and she cooked up a great meal for me and my brother. It was a menu that she has prepared countless times and it showed. I watched as she assembled the right ingredients and prepared the meal like a master chef. If she was up against Bobby Flay on a Throwdown, Bobby would have been embarrassed.

Experience is a great builder of confidence and my Mother was demonstrating the culinary perfection she has developed over many years. At almost 85 years, she can still whip up a meal from almost nothing.

This experience of watching my Mother cook, reminded me of how master salespeople have the ability to perform in style and grace when the heat of the competition is on. I asked myself, how does someone get to this place of confidence and the answer is clear. It's practice, practice and more practice. However, more than that, it is perfect practice and execution so you can perform your task almost blindfolded.

The sales lesson of identifying perfection

I remember having a conversation with a number of top sales producers and asked them how they handle closing objections. The answer to my question caught me by surprise.
Each of these top sales producers told me that they didn't have an answer for me. In fact, they didn't get very many objections when it came to closing business.

Hidden inside their answer was the real answer and I didn't realize it at first. I had to ask more questions so I could learn the mystery to this interesting question.

How was it that these experienced and top sales producers didn't have any experience in closing sales objections? Closing objections was one of the number one questions I was being asked by younger and less experienced salespeople. Since I couldn't remember my best method, I was asking these top sales producers for some help.

We continued to talk about this situation and we came to this very interesting conclusion. It appeared that these top sales producers were unaware of their secret weapon in sales. They didn't realize how they eliminated almost all objections during their assessment and questioning time with the prospect. It was clearly the questions being asked early in the sales conversation and the answers they gave that were eliminating potential objections at closing time.

This same experience level is where my Mother performs when she cooks one of her classic dishes. She doesn't measure the ingredients and she doesn't know the cooking time. She just knows that in the end, the results will be perfect.

Here are a few lessons from this story:

1. Ask good questions at appointments and probe for the customers biggest problems.

2. Listen very closely for hidden objections in the prospects answers and situation.

3. Flush out and probe for future objections the customer may have.

4. Uncover more than one reason the customer should do business with you.

5. Practice, practice perfection to be able to close more business automatically.