If you're in the sales profession then you've probably already been trained on the assumptive close. In fact, most of you are probably very good at it. The principle behind this technique is that you attempt to complete a sale by assuming as though the customer has already made the decision to buy.
One morning, when I was just starting out in sales at Motorola, I received a call from a fellow sales representative in Chattanooga. He told me a man named Charles "Chuck" Michael Brown of CMB Pulpwood Company in Calhoun had called him. Mr. Brown bought a new logging truck and called the Motorola office in Chattanooga to find out how much a two-way truck radio would cost. Mr. Brown was told that the communications consultant from Rome, Georgia would call him back.
I decided to practice the "assumptive close" as I learned to do it in sales school. I wrote up an order form ready for Mr. Brown's signature and began calling to make an appointment to see him. He was out in the field a lot so I left several messages on his answering machine asking him to call me. A couple of days passed and I still hadn't heard back from Mr. Brown, but the completed order was on the corner of my desk, ready for a signature, so I kept calling. While I was at lunch one day, our office assistant saw the order on my desk, assumed that I had finally sold something and processed the order for shipment. Off and on over the next week I continued to leave messages and play phone tag with Mr. Brown. We never actually spoke, much less scheduled an appointment.
Unknown to me, the two-way radio was delivered the following week along with an invoice for $1,200.
I then got a call from Mr. Brown to meet him at the Waffle House in Calhoun. I couldn't find the order I had written up, but I figured I would write a new one when I got there.
Now remember I didn't know the order had been mistakenly processed, let alone that Mr. Brown had already received the two-way radio along with an invoice. I thought I was meeting him to make my first sale.
I walked over, shook his hand, introduced myself, reached for a business card and was about to sit down when abruptly he got up and walked out. I stood there watching through the window as he went to his truck, opened the passenger door, pulled out a Motorola box, walked to my beige Chevy Nova and firmly deposited the box on the hood of my car. Then he stormed back inside, handed me a piece of paper that appeared to be an invoice from Motorola and headed back out of the restaurant.
At that point, the waitress shouted, "Chuck, here's your bill!"
"The Motorola man is paying it," Chuck growled.
As Mr. Brown passed my car, I guess he didn't feel like he had deposited the Motorola box on my hood firmly enough because he picked it up and deposited it a bit more firmly. Twice. Then he got in his truck and drove away.
Inside, a deathly hush came over the crowd. No one was eating. There were two waitresses standing dumbstruck behind the counter in the "order-yelling spot" but not yelling orders to the cook. Even the cook had stopped mid-waffle to see what was going on.
Embarrassed, with sweat breaking out on my forehead, I paid the bill and left as quickly as I could. Once I was in my car and away from the scene, I pieced it all together ? the order form that had disappeared from my desk, the Motorola box, the invoice. Now it all made sense. I called Mr. Brown and left an apology on his answering machine.
Early the next morning Mr. Brown called and said, "Okay Motorola man, I 'cept your apology! And I guess now you got a two-way radio that someone returned that I ken buy real cheap, huh? Meet me at the Waffle House at 11:00 am."
