“Nothing happens until a sale is made.”
Thomas J. Watson – Chairman and CEO of IBM 1914–1956
What is a sale?
Sales are essential to any business. Without a sale, a business has no income. Without a sale, there is no business.
A company may have a vision, a mission statement, and values. Yet none of these is the company’s purpose, which is to generate revenue – even a non-profit must generate revenue to cover its costs.
And revenue comes from sales.
A sale is the exchange of a commodity for money. This can happen in many ways and via many mediums, but the basic tenet still remains true – a sale must be made.
The sales cycle likewise will vary from business to business, but the following elements will always occur in one way or another:
- Prospecting
- Contact
- Identifying needs
- Presenting an offer
- Handling objections
- Closing the sale
Sales prospecting
This is the process of identifying potential prospects – customers who may be interested in – and sometimes even want to buy – your product.
How this occurs depends on your product and business model. A retail business – whether bricks and mortar or eCommerce – will identify its target prospects and advertise (market) to them, then await a response.
A direct sales business will identify their target prospects and initiate contact.
Prospect contact
As we have already seen, contact with the prospect may be direct or indirect.
Direct outreach is active – it means the salesman identifies businesses or individuals who may be in the market for the product and approaches them.
Indirect outreach is passive; retail sales and online are examples. The product is advertised through various appropriate mediums in the hope of attracting the interest of the customers, who then approach the business and express interest.
For direct sales – the salesman will approach the prospect directly through phone, email, or another appropriate channel introduces them to the product and seeks to gain their initial interest.
Identifying needs
Regardless of marketing and contact methods, the salesman must identify the needs (pain points) of the prospect.
No prospect is going to be remotely interested in purchasing unless the product meets a need that they have; no one parts with their cash unnecessarily. The salesman must uncover a pain point of the prospect if the sales process is to continue.
Identifying needs is also a key step for direct sales as it will directly influence the form of the next stage in the sales process.
Presenting an offer
This is the process of showing the prospect in clear terms that they do have a pain point and making sure that they recognise it.
Only after this can the salesman present the offer, which will show that the product meets the need that has been identified.
This will be different for every product and even every customer, as it is a personalised presentation tailored to that prospect.
Handling objections
At this point, it can be expected that the prospect will raise some objections (issues, problems, questions) – in fact, quite possibly a whole list of reasons why they cannot make a purchase. Even if they want to.
The salesman recognises that at this point there will be a collection of valid rational objections raised and several irrational ones. Their job is to determine which is which and handle them accordingly.
Closing the sale
Having handled the objections raised by the prospect, this is the final stage of the sales process, which is asking for the order – asking for the prospect to make a buying decision.
Again, this may take many forms and may involve several steps, depending on the product and the circumstance but eventually, it will come down to a decision being made.
And this decision will be based on everything that has preceded this moment.
Note:
It is important to understand that some of these steps occur over a very long time and many meetings and presentations – and can involve many different people at different stages. A large contract of purchase for, say, a bridge being built, could take months and even years to complete, involving hundreds of people and many different meetings at each step in the process.
In other circumstances, sometimes these steps can occur simultaneously and the whole process may be over in minutes. For example, when purchasing from Amazon, the prospect (having seen an advert somewhere which has identified them, contacted them, shown them a need and presented the product offer all in one) will log onto the eCommerce site and complete the purchase, usually after reading the product description/reviews which would have handled any objections that came to mind.
What is important to recognise is that regardless of circumstance, the sales process will run through this cycle each time.
Source: Teamgate
Sales Best practices
Always prospect regularly
Prospecting is a task that is easy to do and even easier not to do.
Any sales professional must prospect regularly; just as sales are the lifeblood of a business, so prospecting is the lifeblood of the salesman.
The power of asking a good question
Without knowledge, a salesman cannot know what the prospect’s needs are. And if they don’t know what the needs are, they cannot meet those needs.
Uncovering and identifying pain points is an essential skill for a sales professional, so they will always be asking good questions to increase their knowledge of the prospect and their circumstances.
Recognising that everyone is always learning
As with almost every profession, every day is a school day.
Taking personal responsibility for your own continual development is a key attribute for any professional and this is doubly true of sales.
Sales professionals do not make excuses for themselves; rather, they set their minds to learning and developing the necessary skills to be successful. They understand that there is no greater teacher than experience (which is another name for failure and learning through error).
Measure your results
After each unsuccessful sales call, the sales professional should critique themselves to determine what they could have said or done differently that may have resulted in a positive outcome.
After each successful sales call, the sales professional should critique themselves to determine what they did right that resulted in a positive outcome.
Provide value
If you have a product that meets the needs of a prospect and if you provide value, only then a sale can be made.
Sales is not about ‘selling’, therefore – it is about making a connection with the prospect, understanding them, and providing value. It is about them – not you.
“Stop selling. Start helping.”
Zig Ziglar – Author, salesman and motivational speaker
How to succeed in sales
In sales, you will learn as much about yourself as you will about your product.
Success in sales (as in life) is often built on failure; learning from experience is about learning from all experiences – the good and the bad.
To be successful in sales you need motivation and an urge to constantly learn and improve yourself. Motivation is needed to power you through the more challenging moments.
“You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success – on the far side of failure.” (Thomas J Watson, again).
You are always making sales, although you may not recognise it and sometimes it is a sale you make to yourself.
Both in our work and our personal lives, we make a series of negotiations daily – and we also make a series of compromises with ourselves which, in reality, is just selling to ourselves. Some are large sales, and some are so small we don’t even recognise them as such.
One example – a job interview. In your next interview, you are going to have to sell yourself.
Having already prospected for firms to work for, you make initial contact (your CV, whether written or video).
If that goes well, you attend an interview, discuss the company’s pain point (the position that needs filling), you make your pitch and present the offer of your product (which is yourself).
You will then handle questions thrown at you during the process before you reach the decision point by the interviewer (the sale itself). If you have demonstrated that you have value, then a sale may be made.
When you start to break it down, almost everything in life is a sale of some definition; confidence and proficiency in each step of the sales process is one of the greatest life skills we can develop.
This post is one of a series of articles published in support of Splento’s Ready for Work (R4W) programme. This was initially a successful four-week programme run in July 2020.
As of September 2020, R4W v2.0 – a six-month full training and work experience programme – has been created and submitted to the UK DWP for approval to be a part of the UK Government Kickstart Scheme. Further announcements will follow once approval has been granted. For more details, read The ultimate guide to the UK Kickstart Scheme.
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