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Saturday, July 28, 2012

Retail Sales Techniques: Will They Help You?

Editor: The title of this post "retail sales techniques" is used as a general term. Some ideas here relate to corporate and other sales practices. In internet lingo B2B and B2C.

In reality, sales roles in most companies are not a valued position. In some business sectors, sales people are downright badmouthed and ridiculed. I have been at both sides of the fence, neither one is pretty. In the traditional corporate management world, the headquarters and regional offices, sales people are not always understood. Most are seen as slick (i.e. slippery) deal makers, ready to "bomb the price" to close a deal. In general, very few corporate managers without direct sales experience understand the intricacies and subtleties of a sales process. That said, there is awareness in most senior executive circles of the role sales plays in the success of the company. While it is simplistic to say that "without sales you don't have a company", the concept goes beyond simply stating this fact. Why is this an issue to address in this blog? Because I see gaps in the understanding of what it takes to sell on the internet. Real gaps in effective internet sales, lead generation and attractive offers. Many real gaps in sales operations. Real gaps in actually running a sales effort on company web sites or sales portals (online shops). So while you may have a good design and bring people to the site with SEO or fantastic writing... if you want to sell, you need to do more than that.

Scanning through Philip Broughton "The Art of the Sale" he starts out with the same observation many of us have: sales techniques are not taught in MBA programs (he studied at Harvard), and sales people are outsiders in the corporate world. Yet his examples cover such a wide range of sales people (i.e. rug sales in a Moroccan shook), it's hard to get a sense of the corporate or internet aspects of sales. This seems to be the issue with many sales books (and courses, seminars, etc.) If you cover a specific field, the material is too narrow and does not help many practitioners in other fields. If you cover a wide range of examples, like Broughton, you end up with examples which are not useful. I have no idea what to do with the rug example. I don't think most corporate sales people will benefit here either. Unless they actually sell rugs, furniture, home accessories and other household items. But don't let this stop you. A good sales book can help you understand many aspects of sales well beyond the psychology.

What general sales theory (technique) books have to offer are examples of certain techniques in sales. You can use many techniques which are standard in one field and completely unknown in yours. Most sales technique books give one key strategy or theory. Guerrilla Marketingis focused on direct sales techniques on a small scale. These may be helpful to small product managers in the corporate world, but don't go looking for corporate sales strategy here. While on the other end, Buck Rogers in The IBM Waygoes into specific sales and marketing techniques of a world wide organization with tens of thousands of people. This is the classic on training and organizing large sales teams selling complex products. Don't go looking for tips on sending direct mail post cards here (actually Ogilvy in his personal account on advertising has a good story with Rolls Royce.) The good news is how many practitioners from every corner of the sales profession write, coach and explain their techniques. While the MBAs in the executive suite may not appreciate the subtleties of sales, don't let them stop you from learning and making a good living selling directly and on the internet. Next, we can go into the tools and skills used in the sales profession. Contrary to most first

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