In This Chapter
Understanding common methods salespeople use to get their messages across
Improving your life and your career by improving your selling skills
Selling is happening every time two human beings communicate. Itâs everywhere around you. In fact, selling affects nearly every waking moment of your day. So in this chapter, I help you understand what exactly this thing called selling is, how itâs done, and how you can use selling skills to make your life and your career better.
Understanding What Selling Is
In the strictest sense of the word,
selling is a process of communication in which one party imparts knowledge and information to the other party in order to win the first party over to the otherâs ideas, concepts, products, or services. In the traditional sense of the word,
selling is the process of moving goods and services from the hands of those who produce them into the hands of those who can benefit from their use.
Selling involves both educational and persuasive skills on the part of the person doing the selling. Itâs supported by print, audio, video, and online messages that sell either the particular item or the brand name as being something the buyer would want to have.
In the 1800s Robert Louis Stevenson said, âEveryone lives by selling something.â Without selling, products that have been manufactured would sit in warehouses for eternity, people working for those manufacturers would become unemployed, transportation and freight services wouldnât be needed, and all of us would be living isolated lives, enjoying only the fruits of our own labors.
Look around you right now. You can probably spot hundreds, if not thousands, of items that were sold to get where they are right now. Even if youâre totally naked, sitting in the woods, you had to be involved in some sort of selling process to have this book with you.
If you choose to ignore material possessions, take stock of yourself internally. What do you believe? Why do you believe what you do? Did someone â like your parents or your peers â sell you a set of values as you were growing up? Did your teachers persuade you to believe, through demonstration, that 2 + 2 = 4? Or did you figure that one out on your own? Odds are that whether youâre living in a material world or youâve forsaken all earthly possessions, youâve been involved in selling one way or another.
The preceding paragraph should have persuaded you to at least look at selling a bit differently than you have in the past. It was done, too, without pushing facts and figures on you. Good selling isnât pushing; itâs gently pulling with questions and getting people to think a bit differently than they have before.
Getting a Grip on How Selling Is Done
Although the definition of selling is fairly straightforward, the approaches to selling are virtually endless. In this section, I cover the primary ways that products and services are sold (in order from most direct contact to least amount of contact), and I give you some important tips for using each method.
Face-to-face
On an average day, many sales are concluded in a face-to-face fashion. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are purchased in person at favorite restaurants. People physically register in hotels or check in at airport counters. Retail stores abound with sales opportunities, and millions of salespeople sit across desks, conference tables, or kitchen tables turning prospects into clients. The only retail establishment I can think of where you can make a purchase without speaking with someone is the self-checkout line at the grocery store.
The fun part about person-to-person selling is that you can read prospectsâ body language and speak with yours. You can hand them information. Have them handle your product or experience the service firsthand. Involve all their senses. Have them taste, touch, smell, hear, and see just how cool your widget is. (I cover methods for doing this in
Chapter 10.)
Phone
With a telephone, salespeople have the potential to reach nearly any other person on the planet. And what you say when your prospective client answers the phone, if he answers at all, is critical. In some industries, you actually try to sell the product on the first call (referred to as a one-time close). In other industries, youâre selling interest â enough interest that the person to whom you speak gets out of his home and down to your store or lets you visit him in his home or place of business. Either way, youâre selling what your business is all about, leaving the person on the other end with a very distinct impression of you and your company â good or bad. And you only have a few seconds to make that connection before he reacts with a brush off or hang up.
Although telemarketing is a thriving method for reaching potential clients, many telemarketers who sell to consumers are finding it more and more challenging to reach a live person when they place their calls. If you plan to use this method of approach, be prepared to leave curiosity-building voice messages in order to make connections with potential clients. More and more people are screening their calls with caller ID features and voice mail than ever before. So unless you have your number listed in the phone book as âSweepstakes Winner Announcement,â plan on reaching a lot of answering devices. (I cover telephone strategies in more detail in
Chapter 7.)
If you hear a live person say âHelloâ on the other end of the line, you almost have cause for rejoicing â and you have to be prepared for that happening. Be clear about what youâre selling, whether itâs a product, a meeting, or simply getting permission to send the person information.
Despite the difficulty telemarketers often have in getting through to people who are willing to listen to them, selling by phone is widely accepted and recognized as a true sales profession. It requires tact, training, and the ability to articulate a compelling message in a very brief amount of time, as well as the skill of helping others recognize you as a warm, caring individual who has their needs at heart. Companies across many industries realize that gifted phone sales professionals can help bring a product or service to market in a much more efficient and cost-effective manner than face-to-face selling and reward good ones accordingly.
Email
Many companies rely primarily on email solicitations. In fact, an entire industry revolves around writing copy specific to email marketing and strategies to get your messages through the many spam filters employed by individuals and companies alike.
Even though email allows to you get your message to the person who owns the email address, it doesnât mean youâre actually reaching him. Many people set up multiple email addresses. People may use one email account for personal communication, another for providing contact information on websites, and one for commercial use. Thousands of email addresses lie aba...