Sales

James Buchanan Brady, commonly known as Diamond Jim Brady, was a highly effective salesperson for Manning, Maxwell and Moore, a railroad supply company.^[1]^[2]

Sales are business activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.

Salesmanship and achievement orientation

See also: Achievement orientation

Harvard Business Review indicates about success in selling: "Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals."^[3]

Salesmanship and empathy

Empathy is one the most important things for a salesperson to have as it enables him to have rapport with his sales prospects/clients and adopt a problem solving approach to his prospects/customers needs/problems/desires.

Articles on sales and empathy:

Is Empathy The Most Important Selling Skill?, Forbes

7 Ways to Remain Empathic While Still Making Deals, According to Real Sales Leaders

Unlocking Sales Success: The Power of Cognitive Empathy

Healthy balance between listening and talking during the sales process

Talking too much is often an issue among rookie salespeople. Despite knowing it can turn off prospects and hinder a sale, even seasoned sales representatives still find themselves doing it. Replacing speaking too much with listening is a must for salespeople to improve and maximize their sales efforts.^[4]

Importance of marketing and sales prospecting to sales efforts

See also: Sales prospecting

According to the book Contemporary Marketing Wired, "Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives."^[5] The four key variables of marketing, which are often referred to as the 4 Ps of marketing, are product, place, promotion, and price.^[6]

Marketing and sales have separate primary goals. Marketing is about creating the right product/service offer and raising the awareness of a brand, while sales is about converting a brand's awareness into sales and profits.

Sales prospecting is creating a pipeline of potential customers. Sales professionals who insufficiently sales prospect in terms of the number of people/organizations contacted often severely limit their number of sales. Sales professionals who fail to do an adequate amount of sales prospecting typically aggressively focus on weak prospects with low probabilities of buying their product or service due to not finding enough good prospects (For example, the product/service is not a good fit, lack of interest, lack of a budget, etc.).^[7] Effective salespeople qualify sales prospects and contact them on a frequency that is commensurate with their level of interest and their potential fit with their product/service. Contacting a potential future customer too frequently in a given time period risks losing them as a potential future customer due to their annoyance and their increasing perception that the salesperson is pushy and/or desperate.^[8]

The article Sales Is Not a Numbers Game — It’s a Prospecting Game indicates:

“

Sales is not a numbers game — it’s a prospecting game.

Everyone is not a prospect

I can tell when a sales professional believes what that other sales instructor says when I ask them a simple question.

When I ask a sales professional to tell me who their ideal customer is, they should be telling me specific descriptions of the types of customers they call on who will most likely buy from them. They may include demographics. Demographics are data about your prospects, and could include company revenue, number of employees, years in business, company location, size of building, or other data.

Their description should also include psychographic data: how people think. You can sell more effectively when you know how your customer thinks and is going to buy. Psychographic data might include whether your customer is a risk-taker or not, whether your customer is health conscious or not, or whether your customer is a status-seeker or not. You can do well selling to risk-averse customers if you're able to communicate and reduce their perception of risk; you'll do worse if you're unable to reduce their perception of risk.^[9]

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