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For every business to grow and earn much higher returns on investment, it must have made sales; if no sales are being made, then it automatically means the business is falling out and making losses. Sales make a business thrive.
if you want your business to grow and scale heights, you must respect sales because 90% of your success lies here. Nothing happens until someone sells something. Selling involves two people: a prospective buyer and the salesman or personnel communicating and exchanging with each other until they reach the end while closing the sale or not closing the deal.
Selling involves the customer communicating to the salesperson what their needs are! Or simply visiting a shop and pressing an order by a customer in exchange for money or something else and to the salesman is a deal closed. Then salesperson listens to the customer's orders and responds accordingly by offering the required goods or services; therefore, this transaction involved between a prospective buyer and a salesperson is what we term as making a sale, and in the end, both a customer and the salesperson benefit. A customer benefits from the satisfaction they get from the provided goods and services, while the salesperson gains from the monetary transaction.
Before a customer thinks about purchasing a product, they always give priority to what they are benefiting from the product; salespeople should therefore be in place to communicate the beauty of their products to customers so that they are convinced to buy their products; this means that the salesmen should stop the assumption that buyers will like their products out of the blue after the roll we are in a competitive economy where are so many producers and suppliers of the same product, the power of sales must therefore be portrayed here. Either way, when a customer is interested in a certain sale’s main product and is making decisions of purchasing it, the salesman can never give out his product to a buyer unless he or she is satisfied with the price being offered by a customer.
For a salesperson who wants to win a client's heart, you must clearly communicate the benefits of using your product, possibly in a language that the customer understands best; this is the first source of building trust and earning credibility for yourself.
But do we even know what sales mean in simples terms? Allow me to highlight it so that it is clearer to you, the reader?
Sales refer to commercial activities where products or services are given away in exchange for money or something else. A salesman gives away the products and services and receives money in return, while the buyer gives away money and receives products or services.
Making a sale is a process, and it involves marketing, advertising, at times photography and educating people about your product or service to turn into real buyers.
Types of making a sale
Inside sales
This involves maintaining relationships with the existing clients to generate new sales orders. The client's primary contact is the sales representative, who is expected to maintain the business by building strong relationships with the client and this effective way of making continued sales.
Outside sales
This involves the salesman interacting face to face with the client in the field; that is, it can be in the customer's office or somewhere else, and the major intention of the salesman is to get business or win the heart of the client. In this case, the salesman is expected to be a good communicator, self-motivated, and must make all the attempts to win business and hit the company's estimated target.
Sales support function
This involves organizations working in sales support and giving a helping hand to the people working in the field. Support functions include; providing documentation, collecting cheques and payments, creating new accounts for customers, generating daily reports for sales made, outstanding payments from the customers, passing on questions of the customer to the management, and so many other activities take place.
Client services
This involves making sure that customer’s needs and demands are met, and the person in charge of this is the client service executive. Client service executives are responsible for growing business relationships, ensuring that clients are satisfied and retaining existing clients and new incoming clients. The main intention is to generate repeat orders from existing clients by building a good relationship with them.
Lead generation
This involves developing and conducting research to make a new business contact through networking or any other means available to discover the new potential sales that may not be tapped. The salesperson ensures that the connection is reliable and how it can be perceived for getting a sale. Lead generation can be done by inbound marketing and technology, and digital marketing and most of the leads are generated from the internet.
Business development managers
This involves door-to-door cold calling to generate new leads by business development managers. The business managers are requested to continue to bring new clients and new business opportunities to the company. A business development manager is responsible for increasing the client base, generating new business, developing new contacts, and making business relationships.
Account managers
These are responsible for focusing on existing clients. Their main objective is to ensure that the client's needs are met, find creative solutions and techniques to continue their savings to the existing clients. Account managers are also in charge of maintaining details of the client’s business growth over a period of time.
Consultative selling
A consultant is a person who is an experienced professional with immense knowledge about a particular subject matter for a specific field. They work in management, education, accountancy, marketing, public relations, engineering and many other fields. There are internal consultants and also external consultants; the internal consultant operates within the organization and in the areas of specialization where other departments need him, while external consultants are employed externally by the client for his particular expertise temporarily.
B2B AND B2C
In B2B, the client has been approached as himself a buyer has potential customers. The deals are in large terms of economic value. At the same time, B2C involves the separations of customers directly by a business. The nature of the deal is small, and there are multiple deals with multiple customers.
Online selling
This involves segmentation, targeting, and positioning, which are crucial through online selling to reach the target customer's message; this is one of the most cost-effective at generating the highest returns on investment.
Saling is a process that takes place between the customer and the salesperson, and of course, these different stages go through; let’s look at the process of selling until the end.
The sales process refers to a repeatable set of steps a sales team or salesman takes to move a prospect from an early stage to the real buyer or a closed customer. A consistent and strong process helps to close deals easily.
The detailed process of selling
The sales process works by first mapping out how you will get prospects into your sales funnel take them through the process until they become customers. This is usually done by putting your sales process steps into a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. A sales process can be made even more effective when you first take the time to identify your ideal customer by reviewing your highest spending and most profitable long-term customers. Once your relationship begins, you need to follow up regularly with your clients to make them feel important.
Prospecting
Prospecting is the process of sourcing and identifying new leads or clients to begin working through the sales process. Prospecting might involve setting lead generation campaigns to contact new markets or online research on sites like LinkedIn or Quora. It also might take place at conferences or industry events. It can also be done by asking current clients or colleagues to refer individuals who might be interested in your product or service.
Connecting and Qualifying
The connecting process involves representatives initiating contact with those early-stage leads to gather information. Qualifying new leads involves deciding whether or not they're a good fit lead for your business and whether or not they will likely move forward in the buyer's journey. Qualifying also involves assessing whether the prospect can be able to pay for the product. The representative can determine whether a lead qualifies or not by connecting with him or her physically, through a phone or an email by asking several questions to assess whether the person qualifies.
Initial meeting
This involves scheduling the first appointment with the leads after confirming that they have fully qualified. The first meeting is meant to make further analysis on the prospect; when an agreement is brought to the table, ensure they are the primary decision-makers and give them a chance to discuss their own needs.
Researching
Researching involves representatives knowing more about the prospect by digging deeper; when representatives learn more about each prospect and company, it allows them to offer a more tailored and personalized experience and improves the likelihood of closing a deal. Researching involves understanding each prospect's challenges and needs and establishing how your product or service can help bring solutions. The tools that can be used include; needs assessments and surveys.
Presenting
This involves a salesperson running a formal presentation or demonstration of your product or service for your prospect on how he or she will benefit from it. This is usually done when the prospect has shown some interest in the product. While presenting to the lead, you must drive all your presentations to satisfy the prospect's needs and how the product or service will benefit them.
Handling Objections
This involves listening to the prospects' objections and questions from prospects; this helps representatives drive your product or service to fit the prospect's needs and wants.
Making an offer, negotiating and finalizing
When the prospect's needs are understood, you choose to make an offer or not, but once you choose to make an offer, you will need to negotiate the final terms and conditions.
Closing the sale
This involves coming to a conclusion or reaching an end by the prospect and the representative. The close step is what every salesperson works toward. This is expected to result in a mutual benefit and a contractual agreement between the prospect and the seller. Once a deal closes, the salesperson receives a commission on the price they negotiated with the customer, and the account usually passes to an account manager or customer success representative.
Deliver the product
This is the last stage of closing a deal where the representative delivers the product or service to the customer physically. At this stage, you can ask the customer to make referrals, and then you can also follow up to see how helpful the product is to the customer.
In conclusion, selling is a process that is crucial if you want to grow your business and earn a much higher rate of return on investment, and therefore you must respect it from the initial start.
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