When starting a new journey it’s better to start at the beginning!

The response to the recent Post on the topic of selling has been very gratifying and if that is an indicator of what you, the reader, is looking for then there is plenty more to offer.  By the way, these posts will be grouped within a separate link under Archived Posts on the right-hand side of the home page of the Blog.

Let’s go right back to basics with a very simple question.  What is selling?

Here are some answers that a quick web search produces:

1. Selling, at its essence, is a conversation with a purpose. Really, that’s all it is.
2. the exchange of goods for an agreed sum of money
3. A sale is the pinnacle activity involved in selling products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity.
4. Sales is helping the customer to buy
5. Selling is one of the least understood practices of communication, (but then the author fails to explain what it is!)

And so on.  It’s too long ago for me (I moved on in 1978) to remember what IBM defined as ‘selling’ but it was probably something along the lines of one of the first 4 randomly found definitions above.

Somehow each of these definitions misses the point.  Let’s go back to the definition proposed in that earlier Post.

Selling is a basic human activity.  Selling could be defined as the process of getting others
to do what you wish without having any formal authority to coerce them to do so.

This, to me, gets to the heart of the meaning.  Because it is a meaning that applies to all forms of selling.  From convincing someone close to you to either do or not to do something, all the way through to closing a multi-million dollar contract.  Note that the process is not coercion as in the sense of, “Man with good argument less effective than man with good argument, with gun!”  🙂

The other key word in that definition is the word ‘process’.  It’s a human process with clear stages, albeit in most cases with fuzzy boundaries, never more so than when we are talking about the selling process in the business-to-business environment.

Those stages are:

• Identifying the potential customer (the suspect)
• Making contact and gathering information
• Proposing a solution
• Agreeing the solution
• Implementing the solution

or one might approach it from a slightly different angle by using more human terms:

• Sifting the marketplace to identify the characteristics of potential customers (researching for prospects).
• Approaching/contacting the appropriate influencer or decision maker (may be a number in a complex sales situation) within the potential customer.
• Stimulating interest in your proposed solution (IBM called it Upsetting the Homeostasis and will be the subject of a later Post as it is such a crucial step in the sales process.)
• Agreeing the specific benefits, for that customer, of your solution.  These will be both tangible and emotional for each person that you speak with.
• Stimulating and consolidating the ‘desire’ to acquire your solution, again on an individual basis.
• Concluding the ‘contract’.
• Implementing the solution and assisting the customer in the achievement of the specific benefits.
• Hopefully, being given licence to revisit the client on a regular basis and create a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.

It is this latter list that will form the structure for future Posts on this whole area.

Note that selling is a different process to marketing, (although the author wishes he had had a pound for every time the word ‘marketing’ was used to mean selling!)

If the selling process is correctly described, it should be possible to apply it to just about every transaction where money is exchanged for goods or services.  Check it out and see if this is the case.

Oh, and by the way, when times are hard, and aren’t they just now, selling oneself out of the trough is always the best option.  Why?  Because, astoundingly, so few employers, seem to realise that an effective salesperson is the best investment a company can make.  When it is hard, there is so much less competition from other sales people so the ones who rev up really do win.

By Paul Handover

• Sales