4 Parts of the Sales Process

Yesterday I wrote that having the ability to sell is the only survival skill guaranteed to get one through this economic crisis is it persists. Selling is the one job within a company that can pay for itself. Salespeople are revenue generators; everyone else is an expense.

That being the case, I figured it best to give you some of the fundamentals of sales. This will enable you to start to look at this lucrative field in a different light. It will also provide the foundation for further research.

There are four basic parts to the sales process. They are:

1. Prospecting-the act of finding someone to talk to who has a need and ability to pay for your product.
2. Qualifying-determining if the person you are talking to has the need and/or can pay for your product.
3. Presenting-showing how your product is the solution to the needs uncovered during the qualifying process.
4. Closing-asking for the order.

That is the entire sales process. Everything, no matter how is it packaged, goes through the same process. The only difference is how companies choose to use marketing as opposed to sales people. For example, large retail chains use advertising to do their prospecting instead of sales people.

People often believe that closing is the most important part of the sales process. You often see classified ads wanting "closers". That is the old sales model which had people tying up prospects and hammering them over the head until they bought. Under the new model, closing is a natural progression of the entire process.

So what is the most important part of the process: prospecting. The best closer in the world will starve if he/she has nobody to talk to (just go onto any car lot now to see what I mean). A sales person who has a steady flow of prospects will write consistent business. Those who fail in sales do so because they lack the ability to find people in the market.

There is an old saying, if you ask enough people to buy, someone will say yes.

Look for the sales process in all transactions to familiarize yourself with this concept.
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