by Richard England

Created on: May 13, 2008

As an experienced sales professional I have absolutely no doubts that salesmen sell products and services far more often than customers buy them. Although there are a variety of types of salespeople working in different ways, dealing with customers either face to face or over the telephone. You may not realize it but both the sales assistant in your high street store and the telemarketer who calls you at home will use the same techniques.

Sales and selling is a very skilled profession which gets little in the way of respect or admiration, and in many cases a great deal of bad press, but which allows a great many people a very good standard of living. In some areas telemarketing is one of the only jobs still open to people with no qualifications or experience. There are bad salespeople out there which give the whole industry a bad press, however this is true of any profession and people who are willing to look beyond the stereotypes find many salespeople extremely knowledgeable and helpful.

Many people believe salespeople are born and you either have this ability or don't. This is obviously not the case however there is an art to selling and really only time and experience can hone these skills.

All salespeople have their own skills and methods but essentially every salesperson tends to work in the following way.

Firstly they will identify a need or desire for whatever they plan to sell, either when approached by a customer or by prospecting (cold calling or door knocking). Salespeople tend to use open questions so that the customer volunteers the information they need until they are certain of that of customers requirements.

If there is an opportunity they will then begin to sell, pointing out the benefits and reasons why a customer should buy, a good salesperson will match the product to the customers needs and make sure this is the best solution for that customer.

Finally they will close the deal. This is the hurdle which non salespeople often cannot overcome. Salespeople use a variety of techniques to close deals. Commonly they will offer deals for a limited time, or using closing questions such as "If I could match this price would you buy it now?" before committing to a final price.

Salespeople are notoriously difficult to manage and expensive to pay if any good, companies would not use them if they were not essential. Anyone who thinks products sell themselves has almost certainly never had a product of their own, if they did they would still have it.

Learn more about this author, Richard England.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.