Who can forget Alec Baldwin’s speech about the ABCs of sales: always be closing. The sales industry has certainly come a long way from the suit-wearing 1960s stereotype, with new challenges and developments constantly updating and improving how people approach closing sales.

Sales professionals have years and years of closing strategies to use as examples of what to do and what to avoid. Closing is an important make-or-break moment for sales professionals, and you definitely don’t want weak closing techniques to keep you from making a sale. While that final moment before you put your closing skills to use can be slightly daunting, you can harness that apprehension into a successful situation.

Every sales professional will have his or her go-to strategy for transforming all their hard work into a solid transaction. Your closing strategy of choice will depend on your personal history of success, your personality type, and most importantly, your client. At the end of the day, however, you want to feel confident and prepared: these seven powerful closing strategies in sales will help you make the jump from a potential sale to a successful one.

1. The Summary Close

The summary close tactic is one of the most powerful closing strategies. It allows you to reiterate the customer’s interest in purchasing, with the intention of re-stressing the value and benefits. By summarizing the previously discussed benefits into one attractive statement, you allow prospects to visualize the true value of the deal.

2. Now or Never

There’s a time and place for aggressive selling tactics, but the “now or never” strategy is a popular technique because it can be highly effective. In the “now or never” closing strategy the sales professional makes an offer with a special benefit that adds enticement and urgency to the sale. Special discounts or explaining how the offer won’t last can help someone make their final decision.

3. Asking Questions

As a sales professional, you know how to answer customer questions and how to give information in ways that will inform and educate. When answering customer questions, an effective closing strategy is to ask a question in response. If the customer asks, “Does this come in blue?” answer with another question like, “Would you like it in blue?” In doing so, you canmeasure the customer’s interest and get a greater sense of his or her values.

4. Offer Your Opinion

During your sales career, you will encounter many challenges along the way. When you’re in the closing stages of a sale, one challenge you might encounter is conveying to your client the value of your product or service. By offering your personal opinion, you convey trust and soften the reply if your customer objects.

5. Solicit Objections

It can be hard to get a good dialogue going if your customer isn’t telling you everything. If you are confident that your product or service is the right solution for your customer’s needs, but still can’t make that final sale, then asking specifically what objections he or she might have will allow the customer to raise any final objections without giving a concrete “no.”

6. That Extra Something

Offering an extra incentive to make the sale more appealing is a strong way to close a sale. In doing so, you add urgency and motivation to the sale. As with all closing strategies, you want to consider your own personality and the personality of your client in order to gauge whether this tactic will come off as earnest.

7. Pros and Cons

Making a list of pros and cons works especially well with analytical personalities. Going through the positives and negatives—with emphasis on the positives—allows you to walk through the decision making process with your client and guide them to the best decision.