Latest / Closing the Deal with Fexingo: Sales, Negotiation, and Revenue Conversations for Operators / How One Rep Won by Asking Three Closing Questions
Transcript
- Lucas: You're in the final meeting. The buyer likes you. They've seen the demo, read the proposal, nodded at the right moments. And then silence. Luna: That silence is where most reps fill the space with a discount or a feature dump. And they lose leverage. Lucas: Right. So today I want to walk through a specific case — a rep named Maria who sold for a cybersecurity firm called ShieldCore. She was going after a regional bank, MidSouth Bancorp, for a compliance platform. Total deal size: one point two million dollars over three years. Luna: One point two million. That's not a small close. And she did it without pitching? Lucas: Without a single slide deck. In the final meeting, she asked three questions, one after the other, and then exited. The entire meeting lasted 18 minutes. Luna: Eighteen minutes? For a million-dollar deal. That feels almost reckless. Lucas: It sounds that way. But she had already done the discovery work over four months. The final meeting was just a confirmation. So question one: 'What would have to be true for you to sign today?' Luna: That's a version of the classic 'what would need to happen to move forward?' But framed around 'today' — it creates urgency. Lucas: Exactly. The buyer — the head of IT at MidSouth — said: 'I need to know that your platform integrates with our core banking system without custom work, and I need approval from the CFO by Friday.' Luna: So she got two objections out in the open. One about product, one about process. Lucas: Then question two: 'What's holding you back?' Not 'what concerns do you have?' — that's too vague. 'What's holding you back?' forces a specific blocker. Luna: And he said? Lucas: He said: 'We got burned by a vendor last year. Implementation took eight months, and we had to hire two contractors.' So the real issue was trust in her firm's delivery timeline. Luna: That's a fear objection, not a feature objection. No amount of product specs fixes that. Lucas: So Maria asked question three: 'If nothing changes, what happens in 90 days?' She forced him to articulate the cost of doing nothing. Luna: That's powerful. Because it makes the buyer sell themselves on the need for urgency. Lucas: The buyer said: 'In 90 days, we fail our compliance audit. That's a regulatory fine of at least four hundred thousand dollars, and our board will have questions.' Maria didn't have to say a word about ROI. Luna: So now he's articulated the pain, the blocker, and the cost of inaction. All she has to do is address the blocker. Lucas: She referenced a case study where ShieldCore implemented for a similar bank in 11 weeks, on budget. Then she said: 'I can have our implementation lead call your IT team tomorrow to map out a timeline. If we commit to 12 weeks, would you sign today?' He said yes. She called the CFO with him on the line, got verbal approval, and the contract was signed by end of week. Luna: I love that she didn't just ask the questions and wait. She offered a specific next step that addressed the trust issue. Lucas: Right. She didn't pitch. She problem-solved in real time. And the questions did the heavy lifting. Luna: I can see how this works in complex enterprise sales. But what about transactional deals? If I'm selling a twenty-dollar SaaS product, asking 'what would have to be true for you to sign today?' feels absurd. Lucas: Fair pushback. For low-ticket, you'd adjust. Maybe question one becomes 'what's the one thing you need to see before you click buy?' But the principle holds: you want the buyer to state their condition. Not you guessing it. Luna: So the framework is: state the condition, surface the blocker, and make the cost of inaction explicit. Then offer a bridge. Lucas: Exactly. And the beauty is it reduces buyer's remorse. Because the buyer articulated their own reasons. They can't later say 'you pushed me into this.' Luna: That's huge. I've seen deals blow up after signing because the buyer's champion had to justify it internally. If the champion already owns the reasoning, it's easier. Lucas: Maria tracked her results. Over 40 deals where she used that three-question sequence, her close rate was 68 percent, compared to her baseline of 42 percent. And average deal size actually increased by 15 percent. Luna: Because she wasn't discounting. She was solving the real blocker. That's the kind of data that makes you rethink your own playbook. Lucas: Speaking of rethinking playbooks — I want to say something briefly. This show is ad-free, and that's a choice we made early. But it only works if the people who find it valuable help keep it going. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing. If today's episode moved your thinking forward in some practical way, that's the link. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: No pressure ever. Just a way for those who can to support the work. Now back to Maria's framework — one more layer I want to add. Luna: What's that? Lucas: She always asked the three questions in a specific order. She never skipped question one to go straight to 'what's holding you back?' Because if the buyer doesn't state their condition first, the blocker can be a red herring. Luna: Meaning, they might say 'price' when the real issue is trust. But if you haven't asked 'what would have to be true?', you don't know what 'price' means in context. Lucas: Right. In Maria's case, if she had led with 'what's holding you back?', the buyer might have said 'the CFO needs to approve.' But that wasn't the root blocker — it was the fear of implementation. The CFO was just a symptom. Luna: So the order is: condition, blocker, cost of inaction. That sequence builds a logical chain. Lucas: And it's repeatable. You can script it into any call or meeting. Let me give listeners a concrete template. Question one: 'What would have to be true for you to move forward by?' Question two: 'And what's the one thing holding you back from that?' Question three: 'If we don't solve that, what happens in?' Luna: Then you listen more than you talk. That's the hard part for most reps. Lucas: It is. But when you do, you close one point two million dollar deals in 18 minutes. Luna: Alright, I'm going to try this on my next conversation with a vendor. See if they squirm. Lucas: Let me know how it goes. In the meantime, that's the angle for today. Three questions. One close.