Personal selling for effective business. Personal selling Concept of personal selling

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What sales stages exist today?

Today, business education has a stable systematization of sales stages. So, let's look at the stages of selling a product for a sales consultant:

preparations for sales (advertising);
establishing contacts with the client;
identifying needs;
product presentation;
trial deal;
discussion of business proposals;
completion of the transaction;
establishing long-term cooperation.

Don't be afraid of rejection

Today, various kinds of objections, confrontation and differences in goals should not be perceived as something unusual or problematic. If we talk about sales, then everything is quite the opposite. It should be said that only when the seller is faced with a client’s refusal or the buyer’s disagreement with the transaction does the sales technique of the seller of a consultant for furniture and other goods begin to manifest itself - working on questions and objections and further negotiations regarding cost.

The professionalism of a sales consultant is manifested in how exactly he knows how to carry out negotiations after he has received a refusal at the first purchase offer, so his arsenal should always have a number of techniques that are necessary specifically for further negotiations with the buyer. The variety of all techniques is based on the basic principle of conducting commercial negotiations. It consists in the absence of contradictions on the part of the seller. In a direct confrontation with the client, the only correct step, in his opinion, can be taken - to simply stop negotiations, turn around and leave. Depending on the success with the buyer, the client’s desire for further cooperation with the company, his willingness to give the seller the necessary information at future stages of the sale, as well as his loyalty to the company in general will depend. Therefore, when carrying out commercial negotiations when contradictions inevitably arise, the seller should not put pressure on the buyer, as this will have a very bad effect on the results of the sale, because the client will internally “defend himself.”

Working with questions of interest

Today, there is an established opinion that a seller must be active, energetic, and able to convince anyone and anything. But as practice shows, the most effective sellers are those who know how to listen. The sales technique of a sales consultant is that they are asked leading questions, and they also give the interlocutor the opportunity to say whatever he needs. Even when identifying needs, the seller must be sure to ask questions that will help him determine the real needs of the client and at the same time make him feel truly important, and then he will move into a more comfortable state. This is exactly how a sales consultant should behave. The technique of work is to ensure that the client is satisfied.

Through the questions he asks and his behavior, the consultant should demonstrate such a position that the client understands that he really needs to know how the goods and services offered satisfy the needs.

To do this, the seller must find out what the potential buyer really needs from the product. Taking the position of a simple consultant in this case would be most appropriate, since it is sometimes very difficult for clients to say what they really need, since they themselves do not always clearly imagine their desires.

What are clients afraid of?

Due to the fact that the potential buyer himself does not accurately understand what he needs, in his subconscious he develops a desire to be defensive when negotiating with the seller. The latter should always be ready to communicate with such a client. It is imperative to be aware that the buyer is taking such a position not at all because of his complex nature or because he does not like the personality of the seller. This closed position is based on the client’s usual fears:

he is not sure that his choice is really the right one;
the client is afraid to pay extra, choosing a product with a large markup;
he does not know by what criteria the product and the entire assortment are actually evaluated;
he is afraid of deception from a sophisticated seller;
he does not want to meet with an arrogant and rude consultant;
he does not want to get into an awkward position by showing his incompetence in the properties of the product.

And if even one of his worst fears becomes even slightly justified, he will immediately leave. Sales methods, sales techniques - everything should be aimed at eradicating the client’s fears at this stage and carefully working through all objections.

Dealing with emerging objections

In general, commercial negotiations can be considered to have begun when the seller encounters the first objection. With this type of negotiation, this is the most natural form of buyer behavior. For a qualified consultant, any objection is a signal that the client does not have enough information. For the sales person, the buyer's objections are valuable. The sales technique of the sales consultant is also aimed at the fact that, on the basis of objections, he will always draw a conclusion about the necessary product for the client, and he will try to do everything to remove the uncertainty.

Novice sellers very often take objections as the client’s negativity directed at them personally, which causes a negative reaction. If the seller conducts a conscious, thoughtful conversation, the situation will always remain under control, and he will not react in any way to the potential buyer’s objections, but will simply work with them.

The work should start with a simple compliment. This should be expressed by interest in the client’s opinion and in the response to this objection. Very often this technique is called “joining an objection”, which is built on the principle of “aikido”. For example, in response to a client’s objection that monitors pose a health hazard, we can say that there really is such an opinion, but monitors are now assembled using a special technology with a protective layer, which makes them completely safe. In such a situation, the seller seems to join the objection, creates mutual understanding with the client, and demonstrates that they have much more in common than disagreement. In order to strengthen the “agreement effect,” before answering an objection, you should add: “It’s good that you said this,” “I understand you,” and so on. This is how the seller makes it clear to the client that his opinion is really important to him, and it has a right to exist.

The level of training of a sales consultant is also determined by the fact that he can adapt to each individual buyer.

With the help of affirmative statements, the seller ensures a conflict-free transfer of negotiations to the stage of cooperation. This is achieved by agreeing with the existing objections and then developing the thoughts contained in the objection: “You are indeed right in what you say about the high cost of this machine. But at the expense of such expenses you will get a lot of additional benefits that should also be discussed.”

Very often, objections contain indirect references to advantages. The seller must turn a negative into a positive, pay attention to the good parameters of the goods or services.

“Your product has a suspiciously low price, and besides, you are still new in this business,” the client may say. And he can be answered that it is precisely due to its short existence that the company is forced to adhere to competitive prices.

The most important thing is to reassure the buyer, make suggestions to him, not argue, try to just talk and dispel all his fears.

True objections

The client's real objections are very often masked behind unimportant reservations, since very often he himself does not realize what the true motives are that drive him. Therefore, in order to reach real, and not imaginary, obstacles that will stand in the way of the seller, you should first talk to the client and understand why he does not want to make a purchase.

How should a salesperson break through a false objection to a true one?

A technique called “guessing” can work well in this situation. The seller using it asks questions to all the client’s objections that are aimed at removing all excuses: “If there were no financial restrictions, what would you do?”, “If you didn’t have such a problem, would you make the deal? " If even then the client has objections, then you can repeat the questions. The very last objection will be true.

False objections

At the same time, you should not ignore the client’s other objections, even if the seller can see that they are obviously false. Moreover, if the buyer has expressed several objections, then the simplest of all should be answered first.

Cost discussion

A critical point in commercial negotiations is the client's reaction to the value announced by the seller. There are a number of techniques that make it possible to make this cost reasonable.

A technique called “sandwich” is that during negotiations the price is placed between two “layers”, each of which contains an undeniable benefit for the client. Using this technique, you must strive to ensure that the negotiations end and begin with indications of benefits and benefit, and not just simple numbers.

When using the “comparison” technique, the seller correlates the cost of the product with its benefits that it will bring to the client: “If you think about how much money you can save with this product in a year...”, “Think about how much benefit this will bring to you.”

The “division” technique involves deciphering the value by decomposing it into small components. Thus, you can divide the cost of a purchased product by the number of years during which you plan to use it, and then calculate the cost per month of its use.

How to control your voice?

We all know that depending on a person’s voice, one can give an assessment with 80% probability of age, character, current emotional and physical state. Based on the pronunciation of words, the interlocutor can draw a conclusion about where the speaker is from, what education he has and the general level of development of the speaker.

The sales technique of a sales consultant with a high level of qualifications must have a well-developed skill in establishing emotional contact with the buyer due to the vocal mood of the second. In everyday life, people intuitively adapt their own voice to the voice of their interlocutor, especially when they want to achieve something from him. The professionalism of the seller is also manifested in the conscious control of his voice and intonation, depending on the personality of each client, his goals, and the stages of sales.

The consultant must be “on the same wavelength” with the buyer and help him with the choice of goods, using his wealth of knowledge about the qualities of goods or services. If he manages to make friends with the buyer, then he will get a regular customer.

In conclusion, when the question arises on how to increase personal sales as a salesperson, it is safe to say that you should use all the above tips and strive for more.

Selling their products uses various reminders, persuasion techniques, etc.

This influence got its name - promotion. One type of promotion is personal selling.

It is worth giving a clear definition of this concept

Advantages and disadvantages

Personal selling is a very effective marketing technique. Compared to all other methods of promoting goods, they have certain characteristic features and

direct contact between client and seller;
interaction in the form of dialogues;
the possibility of acquiring long-term cooperation between contacts;
receiving effective feedback from clients;
effectiveness of technology;
the ability to obtain and accumulate marketing information about demand;
relatively high unit costs;

However, it is worth noting that the power of this strategy is complemented by its high cost, which is not always affordable for selling companies.

In addition, the disadvantages of this method also include the limitation on the number of clients that the seller can accept. The fact is that representatives are not robots, so time and physical capabilities allow them to come into contact with a fairly small number of buyers. It is also worth saying that the company is not always honest with its customers regarding the qualities and characteristics of certain products, which can sometimes raise doubts among people who contact this company.

In certain cases, personal selling is most effective. Such cases include:

sales stages at which emphasis must be placed on consumer benefits;
sales processes large volumes supplied through direct channels;
concentration of consumer composition in one territorial unit: district, region, etc.;
in situations involving the sale of expensive and difficult-to-manage equipment, requiring clarification from the seller, presentation and any services provided after the transaction is concluded;
new product sales cases who successfully completed the presentation;
cases with sales of services and goods, which require changes during the transaction depending on the preferences of buyers;

Personal Selling Process Example

An example of a personal selling process can be seen at the work of a company. . Let's say that there is a certain company specializing in tourism services. The starting point of the personal selling process, of course, will be establishing contact with the client. Depending on how much the seller can interest and attract the buyer, the client himself will be open to communication.

1.The seller must be guided by a sense of morality, inspiration. A huge role is played by the enthusiasm of the representative of the travel company, his dynamism and energy. The salesperson must treat the company he represents in exactly the same light in which he wants the client to see it. The success of personal selling depends to a large extent on certain aspects of the physical plane. So in our case, a person who sells serious tourism services must look appropriate. Any little thing can confuse the buyer: unkempt hair, nails, unkempt clothes, an incorrectly tied tie.

2. The second stage of this process can be considered the identification of needs client directly during personal selling. Since researching the desires of buyers goes all the way to concluding a deal, a travel agency agent must pay a lot of attention to this. At this stage, it is important to consider several important aspects: behavior in interpersonal situations and listening skills.

3. Listening to customers is the most important thing. In this case, we are talking about the fact that the seller must not only be able to provide reasoned information, but also give the buyer the opportunity to speak out. When receiving a client, a travel agency representative should listen not passively (just pretending) and not selectively (separating only those points that interest the seller), but actively, paying attention to all the details and subtleties that the client will communicate. In a word, the prospects for concluding a deal depend on how competently the seller behaves when offering travel services.

4. The next stage is product presentation. Any representative must remember that the client will agree to conclude a transaction only if he receives sufficient information about this object. During the presentation, the seller needs to perform a number of tasks: attracting the client’s attention, awakening interest in a particular service and the desire to use the services of this particular travel agency. The seller’s qualities, such as the ability to speak and the ability to persuade, are also important here. A travel agency should not immediately provide any strong arguments; it is most logical to move from weak points to the strongest ones. In addition, the seller should under no circumstances put pressure on the client or try to somehow influence his choice.

5. Clients do not always make contact easily, objections on their part are very frequent, so the fourth stage of personal selling by a travel agency representative will be precisely the fight against objections. In order for the buyer to come to terms with his doubts, you can give him some arguments. In this case, you can compare this travel company with similar companies or agree to the client’s refutation and immediately give an argument that will give the buyer pause. There can be a lot of such methods.

6. Naturally, the ultimate goal is a successful transaction A. The buyer and seller do not always come to an agreement and immediately sign an agreement. In this case, you can also use a number of techniques. For this travel company, a good option would be to provide the client with several options, for example, hotels, which in the end will encourage him to choose one of them. Or you can refer to big discounts on some tours during this period. Thus, after weighing all the pros and cons, the client still agrees to sign the contract, so the deal can be considered successfully completed.

This is an example of the personal selling process in a travel agency. In this case, a contact between a seller and one buyer is presented.

I love learning everything new, interesting and unusual. And also - wrap yourself in a warm blanket, grab some hot cocoa and tell you about the latest in the financial market, hot stories from the offices of bank consultants and other interesting things.

In the 21st century, the profession of sales consultant remains one of the most in demand in the labor market. Salespeople or sales managers are always needed, and good sales specialists are worth their weight in gold. There is very high competition for such personnel, and once you master sales techniques, you will definitely not be left without a job. But getting a job as a salesperson is not difficult, but learning how to sell and, accordingly, earning a lot is much more difficult. Let's look at it: how to increase personal sales for a seller.

Knowledge, skills, skill

To increase personal sales to the seller you need to understand that in any case you must be able to sell. In order to be able you need to know, and over time the skills will develop into a skill and sales will come on their own. On the one hand, there is nothing complicated here, but if you look at it, it’s a whole science. Here you have the stages of sales, and, and and. You can sell, etc. What should a competent seller know?

. You should start learning about sales with the 5 stages of sales. This is the basis of any sales and you cannot do without this knowledge.
Knowledge of the product you are going to sell. The better your knowledge about the product, the more competent advice you can give the buyer.
Knowledge of competitors and customers. It’s not for nothing that all companies now invest a lot of money in marketing market research. Knowing your competitor and especially your buyer is your responsibility.
Nonverbal communication is a very powerful tool; at a minimum, you need to understand the basics of nonverbal communication to avoid making classic sales mistakes.

Most large companies do this, but what if no one trains you or doesn’t give you enough knowledge? To begin with, I would advise reading books for sellers; you can learn a lot of useful information in them. First, read “” and the book. In addition, you can find out a lot of useful information on our website - you can also ask your questions on.

Motivation and sales funnel

Any leader knows. But ordinary sellers, as a rule, do not delve into such terms. But the sales funnel makes it clear what to do to increase sales results. Without going into depth, the sales funnel shows at what stages of interaction with the client we lose sales. To create a sales funnel, an ordinary seller needs to count how many contacts he had with clients, how many of them refused to communicate immediately, how many after the presentation of the product, how many decided to think about it, how many agreed to purchase. This is a simple example as these items will vary depending on the type of sale. First of all, it is important for you to understand:

At what stages do the most clients refuse? For example, if when establishing contact with a buyer, then you need to somehow change this stage, etc.
Understand how the result will change if you increase the number of contacts.

Increasing the number of clients is the easiest way to increase sales; the downside is that it is not available to all sellers. But as a rule, sellers don’t even think that if they spend less time on each client and try to serve as many customers as possible, this will quickly lead to an increase in sales. Or you can simply devote more time to work. One way or another, it all depends on the motivation of the seller; as a rule, the most active managers sell a lot.

The very motivation of sellers

If a salesperson wants to increase his results, he must work on his personal motivation. You should set yourself a goal, such as buying a car or an apartment. Calculate how much money you need for this and how much you need to sell daily. Draw yourself a poster, print out a photo of your goal - visualize and view it before you go selling. This will help you be more focused on the result rather than the process.

The seller sells himself from the beginning!

The salesperson first sells himself, then the company and then the product. This phrase is taken from, but nevertheless it is also suitable for sales to individuals. You need to understand that people don’t like to be sold to, but they love to buy, and the role of the seller here is not to impose or sell the product, but to establish trusting contact and charge the client with positive emotions. The seller should be an advisor to the buyer, a friend and partner in a common business. For many buyers, visiting a store or communicating with a seller is a certain stress; the client is afraid of being deceived and wasting money and time. The seller must create an atmosphere of ease and trust, only then the client will truly open up to you and you will be able to sell anything.

It is very important for the seller to be in a good mood and focused on the buyer. There are a number of simple rules that need to be followed for a good mood:

Get enough sleep. Always get as much sleep as you need to feel good.
Deal with personal problems. Very often I meet sellers who are focused on personal problems. This greatly distracts from work and customers feel it.
Don't work with a hangover.
Maintain your hygiene and be neat.

Pareto principle

The Pareto principle (often called the 80/20 rule) states:

80% of the profit comes from 20% of customers.
20% of labor costs bring 80% of profits

This means that your main profit comes from minor labor costs. And most of your time and effort is wasted on insignificant actions that do not bring you the expected income. The main thing is to understand what is included in this 20% of effort, clients, time and work to improve the processes associated with these costs. Because the remaining 80% does not give a significant result. Let me give you a few examples from life:

Example No. 1

In a household appliance store, in addition to sales, each salesperson's responsibilities include putting things in order in the department. Sellers with the best results spend less time putting things in order, do it faster and in the morning when there are few buyers, and they are customer-oriented and immediately go to him when a buyer appears. In addition, more successful sellers try to take days off during weekdays since there are fewer clients on these days, have lunch in the morning, and do not take smoking breaks in the evening. Sellers with lower results become immersed in the process, take longer to clean up, and as a result lose sales. That is, more successful salespeople understand that they need to focus on customers who bring in money, and everything else can wait.

Example No. 2

Active sales agents sell Internet provider services using a door-to-door approach. The tour is carried out in the evening. The most successful managers put in the most effort between 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm because at this time there are more people at home and they are more inclined to communicate. Whereas less successful agents at this time may spend a lot of time on smoke breaks or communicating with clients, and who are not going to buy today.

These examples show that it is important to focus your efforts on those things that bring you maximum profit. This is exactly what successful salespeople do.

Analyze your sales

Sellers have a very bad habit: to justify their poor results by blaming the responsibility on the buyer, seasonality, competitors, etc. The vast majority of people feel sorry for themselves and do not want to change anything in themselves, looking for problems in others. It’s important to decide what you want: to relieve yourself of responsibility or to earn money. If the latter, then when faced with difficulties you need to look for a solution, and not blame the injustice of the world. There is a good story among sellers about this:

One shoe company sent its salesman to Africa, a week later the salesman sent a telegram: take me away from here, there is nothing to do here, all people walk barefoot.

After some time, another merchant was sent there; after a while he reported: “This is great luck! - the second one wrote with delight, - Send everything you have, the market is practically unlimited! Everyone walks around barefoot here!”

There is another good proverb: the weak look for a reason, the strong look for opportunities. It’s much easier to justify your failures than to analyze the situation and look for ways to sell more.

A good salesperson always analyzes his work and looks for areas of growth. Any seller always has something to improve, but not everyone can see what exactly. In order to understand, you need to start every day and if something goes wrong, look for ways to do it differently.

This question worries both novice sellers and people with some experience in sales. The site has a lot of information on this topic, but since readers constantly ask the question of increasing personal effectiveness in sales, I decided to devote a separate article to this issue.

It is simply not realistic to analyze the techniques used in sales in one article, and there is no point, since information on sales techniques can be found in this article. I decided to give a set of recommendations, by adhering to which, the seller will be able to increase the rate of personal sales.

Studying the product

For successful sales, knowledge of the product is simply necessary. No matter what anyone tells you, the seller’s competence in knowing the company’s product line plays an important role in sales. Let me give you an example from my own experience: I needed to purchase spare parts for a car. I decided to buy from an online store because... there the price was much lower. I called several companies and talked with sellers, I was interested in the compatibility of spare parts with engines, because... The spare part is very specific. All sellers unanimously said that they were not sure of compatibility, but if something happened, I could make a return within 2 weeks. I was not happy with this option; I wanted to buy the part I needed the first time. And imagine my surprise when, in desperation, I dialed the Nth number and the seller gave an intelligible answer to what I needed and helped me decide on the manufacturer, after which I placed an order. Now think about how many clients like me, who do not understand the product well and need competent advice, and how many sales the company as a whole loses due to the incompetence of salespeople. Having studied the product, I strongly recommend that you study the line of competitors and how to write down a cheat sheet and, over time, memorize the competitive advantages of the product being sold.

Choosing a sales technique

At first, we will need to decide on the technique that we will use in sales. Here it is necessary to delve into this issue in more detail, since sales techniques differ depending on the situation. Since most readers are interested in active sales, the recommendations given here relate mainly to active sales, and for them I would recommend the technique or. Having chosen a technique, create several sales scenarios and try to find out which one is more effective in practice. If for some reason the scripts are not working, you can use “ ” to analyze at which stage the failure occurs and take measures to eliminate it.

Developing a manner of behavior

No sales scenario will bring us success if we do not develop such qualities as: Confidence, faith in our words, goodwill and punctuality. I have already said more than once that the seller’s mood is transmitted to the buyer, and if the seller is negative, the buyer will feel it and is unlikely to want to conclude a deal with such a manager. Also, do not forget that the script and the script are nothing more than a hint; I do not recommend reading from the script or memorizing it by heart, since the memorized text is very noticeable to buyers and frankly hurts the ears. As an example, do you personally like actors who pronounce a memorized text without intonation, and constantly get confused? Likewise, the buyer is unlikely to like such a conversation, so we use the script as a hint and put the speech correctly, it should radiate goodwill and confidence.

Train yourself to keep your promises. If you promised the client to call you back in five minutes, be sure to call back! If the information for the client is not ready, call back anyway and advise him on the time frame within which you will provide the information. Very often, deals fall through due to the irresponsibility of salespeople who promise to call back or find out something for the client, but things don’t go beyond those promises.

Self-motivation

To achieve results you must constantly motivate yourself. I recommend setting yourself a goal: buying a car, a summer cottage, etc. At the same time using the criteria. Then calculate how much money you need to earn per day, month, year to achieve this. Based on how many trades you need to close every day to get the required reward. The main thing to remember here is that some are looking for reasons, and others are looking for opportunities!

Analyzing our actions

Keep a diary and analyze all your actions for the day. Think about what you did well, what could have been done better and easier, what didn’t work and why. Also, analyze your mistakes and why they were made. Do not forget that in any situation life teaches us a lesson, and what you learn from it depends entirely on you.

Self-study

You shouldn’t sit and wait for the company to send you to training or additional training. You must constantly engage in self-development, read and study useful information, do not be afraid and do not hesitate to apply the acquired skills in practice. Now there is a lot of information about everything related to sales, don’t be lazy to study it. I recommend bookmarking the site and subscribing to the newsletter via social networks. This way you won't miss anything important in the world of sales.