You have already defined your sales strategy, you have taken the time to document yourself with relevant information, you are clear about the product you are going to market before getting down to business. What about the strategy to be used for sales? Have you thought about sales techniques and what is going to work best with that product on the market? If you haven’t, your sales strategy may not be as effective as you hope.
Take your time to think about the best way to approach these sales and the strategy that you are going to follow. If you’re in a consulting or service-oriented business, you know that building a relationship process will be required, and a sales environment requires the same. The art of selling is not as logical as you might think. If you have not been selling before (many people who start a business have not had sales experience), there are several things to take into account. In the following article we will see some of these things so that it does not take us by surprise.
Have you ever been convinced to buy something you knew you would never use? How do they do that? Did you want to buy something else from them? Did you have a good relationship before? These are some of the questions that come up when you think about the types of sales techniques that should be used. Some older books on sales techniques (from many years ago), included some keywords, such as ethics, service, relationships, hard work, doing the best job possible, and company loyalty. All this led to the idea of starting a relationship and transmitting it with customers so that they keep coming to make more purchases.
Over the years, other ideas began to emerge. Door-to-door salespeople found that they could increase their sales by using a few specific words and some persuasion methods. This led to the proliferation of other techniques of sales They weren’t focused on customer needs or creating a relationship, but on techniques and methods to get a single sale, which was their only interest.
Fundamentals of Sales Techniques
The fundamentals of the most modern techniques of sales techniques are based on a one action in five phases. This started in the 1950s, and included:
- Attention – You have to get the attention of your product or service through some type of advertising or similar method.
- Interest – Attract their interest using an emotional aspect such as how good it will suit them or how good they will be with others if they decide to buy what we offer them.
- Wish – Make their desire for the product or services flourish by showing them the things they can do and even letting them try it first.
- Conviction – Increase the desire for the product or service by proving what the product is worth. One way to do it would be, for example, to compare it with competitors or use testimonials from other clients who have been happy.
- Action – Encourage the client to make decisions. This can be said to be the end point where the sale closes. There are several techniques to close a sale, but basically it is to be insistent so that they decide to make the purchase.
When it comes to closing a sale, the techniques used range from a simple sale to the toughest ones, with different ranges in between.
One of the simplest can be, for example, a direct closing, which is simply placing the order when you see that the customer is ready.
Another is to make a closing with concessions, which makes the customer feel that they are doing a good deal with the purchase. A time trial closure allows the customer to use the product risk-free for a period of time. This works well if you sell products or services to make people’s lives easier. They are unlikely to back down if they have found that a lot makes things easier for them in some area of their life.
There are many more closing techniques in sales techniques, but in this article we are going to focus on one of the most successful ones in getting a really strong loyal customer base. Again, this system is focused on relationship-based sales. We will see this particular method in the next part of the article, which you can see by pressing here.