Managing Personal Selling
A sales pitch is a planned presentation of a product or service designed to initiate and close a sale of the same product or service . A sales pitch is essentially designed to be either an introduction of a product or service to an audience who knows nothing about it, or a descriptive expansion of a product or service that an audience has already expressed interest in. Sales professionals prepare and give a sales pitch, which can be either formal or informal, and might be delivered in any number of ways.
Salesperson
Personal selling, a main tool in marketing communications, is used by retail associates, telemarketers and outside sales managers.
Closing in Sales
Closing is a sales term which refers to the process of making a sale. The sales sense springs from real estate, where closing is the final step of a transaction. In sales, it is used more generally to mean achievement of the desired outcome, which may be an exchange of money or acquiring a signature. Salespeople are often taught to think of targets not as strangers, but rather as prospective customers who already want or need what is being sold. Such prospects need only be "closed. " "Closing" is distinguished from ordinary practices such as explaining a product's benefits or justifying an expense. It is reserved for more artful means of persuasion, which some compare with confidence tricks. For example, a salesman might mention that his product is popular with a person's neighbors, knowing that people tend to follow perceived trends. This is known as the Jones Theory. In automobile dealerships, a "closer" is often a senior salesman experienced in closing difficult deals.
Selling technique is the body of methods used in the profession of sales, which is also often called personal selling. Techniques used in selling vary from the highly customer centric consultative selling to the heavily pressured "hard close. "
All techniques borrow a bit from experience and mix in a bit of guesswork on the psychology of what motivates others to buy something offered to them. Mastery in the techniques of selling can offer very high incomes, while failure in it is nearly proverbial. Coverage of the latter is popularized in works such as Death of a Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross.
Handling Rejections and Objections in Sales
Because selling faces a high level of rejection, it is often difficult for the practitioner to handle emotionally, and is usually cited as the most common reason for leaving the profession. Because of this many selling and sales training techniques involve a lot of motivational material.
A selling interview based on counseling needs to be done in several steps, in a consistent order, from the identification of the needs to a close in which the prospect accepts the seller's proposal. For example, the Sandler rules takes a relatively unusual stance when it comes to objections. While many sales techniques offer specific advice on how to handle objections and stalls, David H. Sandler suggests that only the objecting client is able to remove the objection.
Good Selling
Good selling involves asking questions to elicit the prospect's needs and desires and finding the appropriate product or service that meets those needs and that the prospect is willing to pay for. If good prospecting (qualifying) is done, the prospect may already be well suited to the product or service. In this case, the salesperson simply needs to lead the prospect to act on the desires and needs he has. A good salesperson is much more knowledgeable about his product or service than the prospect could ever likely be and can offer valuable information and insight to the decision-making process.