Yes!  As brutal as Blake (Alec Baldwin) was in his Glenngary Glen Ross speech he was right.  You should always be closing.  The question is how and for what?  When most people think about closing they think about asking for the order.  This is obvious although you’d be amazed at how often we see even this step missed or avoided.  Closing doesn’t just happen, you must ask for the order. My predecessor, Jeff Hoffman said that great closers are willing to “put their prospects in a mild state of temporary discomfort.” No matter how friendly you are with the person you’re dealing with eventually there comes the time when you have to “get them to sign on the line that is dotted!”  However, if you think closing is something that only happens at the end of sales process you’re making that close much harder than it should be.

You should be ‘closing’ from the start.  There are all sorts of things you can close for throughout the sales process.  Think of everything you want/need from the client in order to qualify them appropriately and get them the information they need.  All those ‘get’s are things you can be closing for.  As an example, when someone says “send me information” you can close them on a follow up meeting like this: “I’m happy to send you information.  When would you like to schedule a call to review your feedback and see if it makes sense to take the next steps?”  That is actually a relatively ‘hard’ close.  If someone says “just call me next week” you politely and professionally push back and say “what time next week?” and keep pushing until you get a specific day/time and then send them a meeting invitation so it shows up on their calendar.  The beauty of this is it flushes out the people who are not interested and it helps you practice closing during a stage of the sales process that is not nearly as critical as it is towards the end.

The two main types of closing styles are hard and soft and we need to make sure we’re effective with both.  The main reason is because using the right close on the right person at the right time increases our chances of success significantly.  On the flip side, using the wrong close on the wrong person at the wrong time could be disastrous.  As an example, if you use a soft close on a high level executive when asking for the order you could destroy whatever respect/rapport you had built throughout the process.  On the other hand, if you hard close someone below the power line you could turn them off completely.

Closing is an art form that takes practice. Practice closing at every stage of the sales process and be conscious of the type of close you are using and who you are using it on.  If you don’t want to practice on clients then practice on your friends, family, waiters, retail cashiers, whoever. Once you start paying attention you realize how much you close for on a daily basis without even thinking about it. Now go get some coffee.