We recently hosted a webinar on closing questions to ask when selling and one group of questions that we discussed was closing questions. Here is a clip from that portion of the webinar.

We break our closing questions down into three categories:

  1. Trial Closing
  2. Soft Closing
  3. Hard Closing

Trial Closing Questions
Trial closing questions are questions that check in to see where you stand with the prospect or what they are thinking without directly trying to close the sale. Here are some examples:

What do you think of what we have discussed so far?
How would that feature help your operation?
Is this something you could see yourself (employees / organization) using?
Are we heading in the right direction?
Does this agenda match up with your expectations today?
Is this what you were expecting to see today?

Soft Closing Questions
Soft closing questions are questions that try to close the prospect on moving forward but do it in a fairly soft way. Here are some examples:

What would you like to do next?
What direction would you like to go in?
Do you want to continue talking about this?
When would you like to talk again?

Hard Closing Questions
Hard closing questions are a little more firm in their approach to try to get the prospect to move forward. Here are some examples:

Are you ready to move forward to the next step in the process?
What would you need to be able to make a commitment to move forward?
If you had everything that you want, are you prepared to move forward?
If we were able to give you what you are asking for, would you be able to move forward with the purchase?
When are you going to make your final decision?
(If delaying the decision for a period of time – X months) OK, but do you mind if I ask if there will be a change or something different at that time that will make that a better time to look at moving forward?
Is there anything that is preventing you from being able to move forward with this purchase?

We hope this gives you some new ideas and that you can use closing questions when you are talking with prospects!