Why Closing Isn’t the Most Important Part of B2B Sales

🟦 Business After 60 Conversation

(Week 5)

Last week, we talked about asking better questions and building trust.

Most people think closing is the most important part of B2B sales.

I don’t.

In my experience, by the time you ask for the business, the sale should already have been won.

Early in my career, my sales manager used to say, “I need our best closers on this deal.”

Back then, we were trained on all the classic toolbox tricks: the Alternative Close, the Assumptive Close, the Impending Event Close. We were taught clever verbal manoeuvres designed to corner a buyer into saying yes.

Looking back, I think we were concentrating on the wrong end of the sales process.

The close isn’t where the sale is won. It’s simply where all the preparation that came before it comes together.

If you’ve applied the Look, Read, Watch, Listen habits from the start of this series, you’ve already laid the groundwork.

• You climbed the Ladder of Approach (Week 3), systematically uncovering and resolving objections with each department before moving up to the next rung.
• You asked deep diagnostic questions (Week 4) to quantify site constraints, operational risks, and the true cost of failure.

I’ve never believed great salespeople are brilliant closers. I believe they are brilliant preparers.

They research better. They ask better questions. They listen more carefully. They build trust and technical credibility.

By the time they ask for the business, the decision has practically been made.

Great B2B Sales Aren’t “Closed”—They Are Concluded

When the groundwork is done, the dynamic of the final meeting fundamentally changes. You aren’t trying to persuade a senior decision-maker to buy something they might not need.

Because you’ve already spoken to the people who will use or manage the solution every day, the final meeting rarely becomes a sales presentation.

It becomes a confirmation that everyone is ready to move forward.

That’s exactly what your Ladder of Approach is about.

“What a fascinating operation you have here. Having spoken to your teams across engineering, operations, and procurement, I feel we’ve thoroughly addressed the core pain points and site constraints they raised. As I understand it, they’ve shared their findings with you and recommended moving forward with our proposal.”

Notice the shift? You aren’t saying, “Let me convince you.”

You are asking, “Have we covered everything you need to move forward?”

What to Do When They Hesitate

If the answer is hesitation, do not panic. And above all, do not start offering discounts.

When technical trust has been established, price is rarely the real hurdle. A hesitation at this final stage isn’t a rejection—it’s just an unaddressed concern floating to the surface.

Resist the urge to push. Instead, ask one clean, open diagnostic question:

“It sounds like there’s still a hesitation. What’s the main hurdle standing between where we are right now and getting this project started?”

More often than not, they’ll tell you what’s really holding things up.

It might be a…..

A board sign-off.

A budget meeting next month.

Someone being on holiday.

Another department that suddenly needs to be involved.

Don’t see that as a setback. You’ve simply discovered the next conversation that needs to happen before the project can move forward.

That’s business. It happens more often than you might think.

Remember the Ladder of Approach we talked about in Week 3?

Sometimes you discover there’s one more rung you didn’t know existed.

That’s not a failed sale; it’s simply the next step.

The Sale Is Only the Start

The purchase order is not the end of the relationship; it is the absolute beginning.

Great businesses don’t just win customers—they keep them.

The salesperson who stays involved after the order, ensuring commitments are delivered and initial hiccups are resolved, is the salesperson who creates customers for life.

The best salespeople don’t “close” customers. They build enough trust that the customer simply chooses to move forward.

Looking Ahead to Week 6…

Now that we’ve deconstructed the entire sales process—from initial research to concluding the deal—we are left with a critical question for business leaders:

How do you actually hire someone who can do this?

Next week, we’re taking a fast-paced, practical and slightly controversial look at sales recruitment…and why the infamous “Sell me this pen” interview test is testing the exact opposite of what makes a great B2B salesperson.