I am an advocate for the natural sales approach and am not a believer in hard closing techniques. If you have built a rapport, found out what someone really needs and values, listened to the problems they have that you can solve and presented your solution in a way that matches what they want, asking if they want to go ahead should be natural and usually get you a positive response.

I always make sure that I really listen to what people want, make sure I summarise clearly what is important to them, use their language and put a proposal together that is personally tailored.

I make sure that I either deliver the proposal and discuss the next step with them face to face or I send it by email and follow up within 3 days. Closing the sale needs to be thought about from the start and the more you can find out about what is important to someone in advance the more commitment you will get from them.

I offer a free initial consultation and send out a pre-consultation questionnaire that I request is completed in advance. This usually helps me to get a lot of information about what is important to someone before I see them. The act of completing the questions will add to any buyers’ initial commitment to you.

Everyone wants to be understood and feel like they both trust and like the person who is selling to them. Ultimately everyone wants to buy when they think that what they are buying is going to benefit them and the person selling it has their interests at heart.  Concentrate more on that and you will find closing the sale will be a natural part of the process. I hope this is useful.

I agree with Jackie. Providing the bulk of the meeting has been spent understanding your prospect's business issues, and where and how you might tbe able to help with some of them, 'closing' really isn't anything more than the natural end to the conversation. To develop your confidence though, get used to replaying what your prospect said to you - "You said that it was important to....", "We discussed your need to be better at....", "It's really important for you to be able to do ABC because....". Once you've 'mirrored' your prospect's identified needs and wants (they're different), ask if you 've missed anything. If not, you can present your solution based on those needs and wants and closing becomes simple, and not 'hard sell' at all. "How do we go about raising a purchase order?", "If you can communicate internally, I'll get ready to brief everyone and we can get moving next week.", "When's your diary free for a a kick-off meeting?", "Where would you like us to send the ocntract?" etc......

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