Why 'Always Be Closing' Is Bad Advice
Sales leaders — let’s talk about “closing.”
For years, sales advice has glorified the close. ABC. Always Be Closing. We’ve all seen the movie clip. And many leaders still ask for more closing techniques, better closing lines, stronger closing pressure.
Here’s the problem: In complex print sales, closing is rarely the real issue.
If your team isn’t winning as often as they should, the breakdown is almost always upstream. It’s in prospecting. It’s in discovery. And most often, it’s in qualification.
In commercial print sales, deals are layered — multiple stakeholders, operational considerations, pricing sensitivity, production timelines. If your reps haven’t clearly uncovered the customer’s compelling reason to act, confirmed their willingness and ability to invest, and understood how decisions actually get made, the “close” becomes a painful negotiation filled with objections.
Instead of ABC, consider ABQ: Always Be Qualifying.
When your team slows down and qualifies hard — around pain, budget, internal alignment, and decision structure — closing becomes the natural next step. It feels collaborative, not confrontational. Predictable, not pressured.
If objections consistently show up at the end, they weren’t created at the end. They were missed earlier.
Elite sales organizations in print don’t rely on closing tricks. They build disciplined qualification into every opportunity so that when it’s time to ask for the business, it’s easy.
The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.
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Emily Yepes is a powerhouse sales trainer and revenue producer who lives at the intersection of sales theory and real-world execution. What sets her apart isn’t just her deep knowledge of sales doctrine —it’s that she’s still in the trenches, consistently ranking in the top 5% of over 400 Sandler sales executives worldwide. She brings that same performance-driven mindset to every training room she enters. Emily coaches the sales teams of printing and packaging industry leaders, including JS McCarthy Print+ Packaging, The Packaging School, Canadian Printing Industries Association, Norkol, ImageMark, and Sonoco on everything from prospecting and consultative selling to negotiation and account management. Her average training score? A near-perfect 4.9 out of 5—proof that her clients don’t just learn from her, they love learning from her. She doesn’t deal in hype. Emily brings a practical, psychology-based framework to sales, helping professionals rethink the way they approach buyers, conversations, and themselves. Her philosophy is clear: great salespeople aren’t born—they’re trained. With the right mindset, anyone can learn to breakdown buyer resistance and build real trust that lasts. Approachable, direct, and refreshingly honest, Emily’s training style resonates with sales teams at every level. Her sessions leave people not only inspired—but equipped to sell more and sell better.
