As an actual salesman I must say your theory of sales is wrong. A good salesman doesn't make his speech and tries to close a sale. No no, this kind of thinking wouldn't have gotten me my widescreen flat panel HDTV.
What a good salesman does is tailor the presentation to the person's need. The first step is approaching the customer, the second step is asking questions to get to know the customer and understand their needs (and finding out what they need to hear). The last step is to propose the "complete solution".
You must also do what we in the sales industry call mini-closes. You ask the customer "does this sound good?" or "how does it sound?", without asking them to do it/buy it. The trick is to get them to say yes to these smaller things first, then you go for your grand finale and ask for the sale. This way it's a small progression from saying yes they like a particular movie to yes they want to see it with you, rather than a giant leap from "hello stranger, yes I'll go out with you".
It also carries an advantage. By presenting your offering in pieces and asking for approval on each piece individually you can find out if there's one part she doesn't like. Let's say you do it your way and ask her to a movie on saturday night and some dinner at a fine Italian Restaurant afterwrads. She might say No because she doesn't like Italian food. You might take that as rejection and move on. What if you asked her how she liked Italian food earlier (in the 2nd stage, which is asking questions). And if you did a mini-close (like "pizza is good, isn't it?") you'd know if you should include it in your final offering.
If she said "sure, pizza is great", you know she'll like it more if you offer pizza after the movie or as part of the date. She will also take it as a sign that you're a good listener. If she said No to the pizza or italian food in general, you know immediatly to find an alternative so that you DO NOT ask her to an Italian Restaurant or a Pizza Place as part of the Close.
As far as what type of questions to ask during the process, I have a few words of advice. Never ask closed ended questions in the beginning, never ask open ended questions in the end.
In the beginning you want her to talk as much as possible so you can make a note of her feelings on certain things so you know what to mini-close on. In the end you want closed ended questions, so she says "yes" a lot to the mini-closes. This has a psychological effect of getting her to commit to things. So when you offer them all at once as part of the close there's a greater chance she'll say yes. Why? Because her subconcious knows that saying NO at this point will make her seem foolish since she said yes before.
There's a lot more I can say about this topic and I can go into nitty gritty details I've picked up on over the last 5 months working as a salesman (as well as the great training I've recieved) but I donno if you guys wanna hear all that. If you do let me know
