Buying and selling are fundamental to everybody's life whether it is the simple purchase of groceries or the more difficult sale of a house. Millions of people around the world make a career of selling and billions of people buy from them.
Successful selling is both a skill and an art. It is often described "as 90% perspiration (skill) and 10% inspiration (art)". Much like any job, the source of the 'art' in selling is down to the sales persons themselves, their empathy, their perceptiveness, their human interaction and their general disposition. These attributes can, on rare occasions, be the difference between success and failure. Most of the time however, plain common sense, good practice and professionalism bring in the majority of sales, and these are all skills that can be taught.
While each individual sale is unique and different, there are common elements and techniques to each. People buy from people, even in the case of organisations where the buyer from one deals with the seller in another. The buyer has need, intent and funds and the seller has a product, service or concept. In the real world, the buyer also has the option of choosing from a variety of sellers. The successful salesperson will ask the right questions, understand the need/s properly and present and position their products/services as the best solution for the buyer.
In todays business world, concept selling is becoming increasingly important. The successful motorcar salesperson will invite the buyer to test drive the car. The purpose of this is to reenforce the the feeling of owning the car - selling the concept. By this time the suitability of the product will have been established and the issues of after sales service will have been covered. Professional salespeople in the motor trade will often tell you later that "he convinced himself to buy". P.C. companies have shifted their focus to concepts also. They market their range of products as 'a digital lifestyle'. The task for the salesperson is to convey the concept of such a digital lifestyle to the buyer while promoting the individual benefits of each of the parts.
But whether you work for the Boeing Aircraft Company selling 747's to all the Southern European Airlines or you work in a small clothes shop selling fashion, the sales techniques are the same, just the product knowledge requirements differ. The sales proposition is a process with clearly defined stages which are generic and can be learned. A sales career (or job) with a particular company requires the professional salesperson to learn about their products/services, understand their market, customers and competitors and then apply the skills they have learned.
In reality we are all salespeople. We sell ourselves every day in our dealings with friends, family and co-workers. Some people are better at it than others but the difference with a professional salesperson and everybody else is that he/she is trained to do it.
John Mallon is an internationally recognized sales professional who, having operated at a senior level in various sectors, now runs his own a successful training and consulting business. John can be contacted by email.
