What is Selling?
06 May 2010
What is selling? I imagine what comes to mind is: a salesman who does his best to make his company’s solutions attractive to his target audience. But a sale takes place thanks to the person buying.
Buying and selling
If the buyer decides, where should you direct your energy?
- On recommending your product or organization?
- Following the competition as well as you can?
- Or by concentrating on the buyer?
Selling is…
What is my definition of selling? I have two:
- Selling is helping to buy
- Selling is removing insecurities
Selling is… helping to buy
This definition indicates exactly what it is to buy. The emphasis is on the process someone goes through in deciding and your role in this. Sales will only take place if someone makes a purchase. And the sale is only successful if this takes place with you. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. Not in your imagination, but by asking the buyer questions until you understand exactly how he sees the sales process. You can help him with this. That brings me to the second definition.
Selling is… Removing insecurities
Say you’re planning to buy a new car. Under which circumstances would you definitely not make any decisions on your purchase? If you still have uncertainties. About the color, about the options…
As a sales person it is your job to discover which uncertainties the buyer still has. And to take these away. How? Simple: by asking after them and finding good solutions. The biggest uncertainties are often the most difficult to solve. See these as your personal challenges, and whatever you do, don’t avoid them. And be sure to find satisfying answers to the most difficult questions.
Guided Selling helps...
Many CRM systems are implemented to be able to store sales-directed information: company data, customer names. Great for mailings, forecasts and the like. But a well-implemented CRM system is a sales-supporting system. Or even better: a purchase-supporting system. Guided Selling software helps you put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and to ask him the right questions. It will help you facilitate the process of helping the buyer make a purchase. It will help you discover uncertainties at an early stage. Next week I will tell you how.
Marijn Schouten is Director Business Development at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Marijn has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.
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