L3-The+Selling+Process

=**Lesson 3 - The Selling Process**= The key function of selling includes direct and personal communcations with customers to assess and satisfy their needs.

This lesson comes from The Money Instructor @ [|www.moneyinstructor.com] The joke goes that a good salesperson could sell sand in the desert. In other words, people will buy what they don’t need if the salesperson is persuasive enough. A successful selling technique is a complex blend of methodical approach and the application of psychology.

The salesperson needs a special combination of personal qualities and trained skills. A traditional methodical approach to selling is to divide the process into logical steps. It is usually split up into seven steps which are:1. Planning and preparation 2. Opening 3. Questioning 4. Presentation 5. Overcoming objections/negotiating 6. Closing 7. After-sales follow-up In planning a sales campaign, you should first learn as much as possible about your service and product. It is important to be able to describe its features and its benefits to a potential buyer. You also need to know about any products and services that form your chief competition so that you can decide what advantages your company’s have over the others on the market. If you are selling to an organization, you need to know who makes the buying decisions and what their current needs are. It will also be helpful to gather as much information as possible about their strategies, budgets and buying patterns. This is the kind of information that is essential to enable you to put together a presentation that addresses their specific needs.

Your sales presentation might be a formal one delivered to a group, at a conference, for example, or something more informal to show an individual. It will need to be professionally organized with appropriate aids and handouts. In opening your sales presentation you need to be confident and enthusiastic. Remember that body language peaks volumes, so a firm handshake, a smile and relaxed posture are important. Introductions should be clear and you should make the purpose of your visit or presentation clear.

Questioning is a key tool in finding out how your product or service can benefit the customer and how you can develop the sale. Questioning helps you build rapport as well because selling is all about establishing a good relationship. People prefer to buy from those who take the trouble to find out what the customers really need and to understand the concerns and constraints they have. Open questions (who/how/what/where/when) are useful for information seeking. You may also need to encourage people to tell you more by reformulating what they said or echoing their last comment. This can be a more effective strategy than asking a “why” question.

Asking “why” makes people feel defensive and they may not open up. It is always important to check that you have understood what the customer has told you, and you do this with closed questions:

Do you mean that you prefer x?Is it true to say that your old contract is up for renewal?

The sales presentation stresses the benefits the customer would obtain from buying your goods or services. It has to show that in buying from you, the customer will be able to satisfy his or her main needs. The presentation will vary therefore from prospect to prospect and will be driven by the information obtained through questioning.

If you are selling a car, the needs of a working mother with young children will be different from those of a single woman, but the same car might have benefits for both. One well-known brand of cosmetics sells its beauty products by targeting a woman’s need for self-esteem, with the tagline: “…because you’re worth it.”When it is time to deal with objections and to negotiate, the seller needs to view objections as opportunities to find out more about the customer’s needs. If there are aspects of the sale that you can negotiate so that the customer’s objections can be dealt with, this will be the time to explain the possibilities that are available. It might be a finance package, improved delivery dates, or some form of customizing the product or service for this particular person or organization.

By this stage you will be aware of the messages the customer is sending out. If it looks as if the customer is really sending out signals saying they want to buy, then you can move to the closing stage. You simply need to ask if the customer wishes to go ahead. It may seem as if the deal has been successfully concluded at this point, but it has not. The follow-up is crucial. And here you depend on the efficiency and integrity of your organization. It will be essential to honor delivery dates and after-sales service to ensure customer satisfaction.

The professional salesperson will, therefore, always keep in contact with the customer to see that all the conditions are being met. The long-term aim of selling is not just to sell one item but to cultivate a loyal customer. If the follow-up phase goes wrong, you will lose that longterm relationship and the goodwill that could generate more business by a satisfied customer spreading the word.

A number of acronyms are used in selling to simplify some of the key concepts: FAB, USP and UPB (Features Advantages Benefits, Unique Selling Point, and Unique