15. Marketing is replacing selling. Selling is part of the marketing process. Sometimes, professionals use the term 'marketing' instead of selling, believing it is more acceptable. There is also a mistaken belief that marketing can replace selling and eliminate the need for direct, one-to-one customer contact. This may be true for some products or services where the salesperson acts simply as an order taker. For most products and services, however, selling is a necessary and valuable part of the marketing strategy.
16. All successful salespeople are hard closers. Surveys show that today's top salespeople seldom spend much time on closing. Instead they focus on finding customer needs, demonstrating benefits and asking for customer feedback. The professional salesperson, after making sure his client has all the information needed to make a decision, simply asks if they would like to take the next step.
17. Product knowledge is what separates the mediocre salesperson from the outstanding salesperson. Product knowledge is extremely important in professional selling. But product knowledge is isolated information, which has really no value to anyone. Facts, data, and statistics about products or services do not create sales. However, what really is the key to most sales is the proper understanding of the problems of a prospect or a specific business. To understand a business problem is to properly analyze and then to provide solutions to the customer is the essence of professional sales. Product knowledge is only a small part of this process.
18. A career in sales is usually near the bottom in terms of status and income. Selling is the highest single paid career in the world. Furthermore, many CEO's and other executives started in sales, which has always been one of the fastest tracks to upper management.
19. Women are only effective in certain types of sales positions. More and more companies are asking to interview women candidates as well as men in such fields as industrial equipment, chemicals, construction, etc. Success in sales has nothing to do with gender but everything to do with that person's ability to reach well defined goals within a certain time frame. We are seeing more and more women entering the selling profession as more awareness is created about this dynamic profession.
20. The most effective salespeople are more extroverted than introverted. Actually, high performance salespeople are quite analytical and the majority of studies indicated that the top salespeople lean more to the introverted side than the extroverted side. For example, in the strategic consultative sales process, a winning salesperson has to pick apart a complex problem to come up with a workable solution often in a very competitive environment. The emphasis here is on thinking and problem solving skills versus being a real socially inclined person. The art of selling is the art of problem solving.
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