Sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale.
The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.
A person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same "coin" or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, "worth the price". Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.
Marketing and sales differ greatly, but they generally have the same goal. Selling is the final stage in marketing which puts the plan into effect. A marketing plan includes pricing, promotion, place, and product (the 4 P's). A marketing department in an organization has the goals of increasing the desirability and value of the products and services to the customer and increasing the number and engagement of successful interactions between potential customers and the organization. Achieving this goal may involve the sales team using promotional techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations, creating new sales channels, or creating new products. It can also include encouraging the potential customer to visit the organization's website, contact the organization for more information, or interact with the organization via social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Social values play a major role in consumer decision processes. Marketing is the whole of the work on persuasion made for the whole of the target people. Sales is the process of persuasion and effort from one person to one person (B2C), or one person to a corporation (B2B), in order to make a living resource enter the company. This may occur in person, over the phone or digitally.
Another area of discussion involves the need for alignment and integration of corporate sales and marketing functions. According to a report from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, only 40 percent of companies have formal programs, systems or processes in place to align and integrate the two critical functions.
Sales, Digital Marketing and Automated Marketing campaigns. With the increase of the use of the internet today, sales functions of several enterprises are finding traditional methods of marketing quite old fashioned and less efficient. So the use of automated Marketing Applications is on the rise ranging from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Sales Force Management.
Traditionally, these two functions, as referred above, have operated separately, left in siloed areas of tactical responsibility. Glen Petersen's book The Profit Maximization Paradox sees the changes in the competitive landscape between the 1950s and the time of writing as so dramatic that the complexity of choice, price, and opportunities for the customer forced this seemingly simple and integrated relationship between sales and marketing to change forever. Petersen goes on to highlight that salespeople spend approximately 40 percent of their time preparing customer-facing deliverables while leveraging less than 50 percent of the materials created by marketing, adding to perceptions that marketing is out of touch with the customer and that sales is resistant to messaging and strategy.
Sales Process Engineering
Sales process engineering is intended to design better ways of selling and make salespeople's efforts more productive. It has been described as "the systematic application of scientific and mathematical principles to achieve the practical goals of a particular sales process". Paul Selden pointed out that in this context, sales referred to the output of a process involving a variety of functions across an organization, and not that of a "sales department" alone. Primary areas of application span functions including sales, marketing, and customer service.
Books
- High-Impact Consulting, Robert Shaffer
- Fourth Generation Management, Brian Joiner
- Lean Selling, Robert Pryor
- TQM for Sales and Marketing Management, James Cortada
- Sales Quality Audit, George Smith
- The Dolphin and the Cow (2004), Todd Youngblood
- Sales Process Engineering, A Personal Workshop, Paul Selden
- The Fluff Cycle, Brent Wahba
Sales Methods
A sale can take place through:
- Agency-based sales * Complex sales * Consignment * Consultative sales * Retail or consumer * Sales agents (for example in real estate or in manufacturing) * Sales outsourcing through direct branded representation * Telemarketing or telesales * Transaction sales
- Business-to-business – Business-to-business ("B2B") sales are likely to be larger in terms of volume, economic value and complexity than business-to-consumer ("B2C") sales. Often the complexity involves one business working closely with the other to define problems, to finding solutions, to supporting after-sale operation. Because of this complexity, there is a need to manage the relationships between the buying and selling organizations, for example using Peter Cheverton's relationship models[12] and the stakeholder map by Anderson, Bryson and Crosby[13]
- Channel sales, an indirect sales model, which differs from direct sales. Channel selling is a way for sellers to reach the "B2B" and "B2C" markets through distributors, re-sellers or value added re-sellers VARS.
- Direct sales, involving person to person contact
- Electronic
- Electronic Data Interchange
- Web – Business-to-business ("B2B") and business-to-consumer ("B2C")
- Indirect, human-mediated but with indirect contact
- Mail-order
- Vending machine
- Pro forma sales
- Request for proposal – An invitation for suppliers, through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific product or service; an RFP usually represents part of a complex sales process, also known as "enterprise sales"
- Traveling salesman
- Door-to-door methods
- Hawking
- E Selling (Selling on E Commerce portals)
Techniques
- Action selling
- Auctions
- Challenger sales
- Cold calling
- Conceptual selling
- Consultative selling
- Cross-selling
- Guaranteed sale
- Hard selling
- Inbound sales
- Needs-based selling
- Paint-the-picture
- Personal selling
- Persuasive selling
- Price based selling
- Professional selling skills
- Relationship selling
- Reverse selling
- Sales enablement
- Sales habits
- Sales negotiation
- Sales outsourcing
- Sandler selling system
- Social selling
- Solution selling
- Strategic selling
- Take-out or take away
- Target account selling
- Transactional selling
- Upselling
KPIs
One source states :
- Sales Growth: Is your business growing steadily?
- Sales Target: Are you on track regarding the sales targets?
- Customer Acquisition Cost: How much does a new customer cost?
- Average Revenue per Unit: What is your average revenue per user?
- Customer Lifetime Value: How much do you expect to earn per customer?
- Customer Churn Rate: How many customers do you lose?
- Average Sales Cycle Length: How do you shorten your sales cycle?
- Lead-to-Opportunity Ratio: How about your lead quality?
- Opportunity-to-Win Ratio: How many qualified leads result in closing a deal?
- Lead Conversion Ratio: Is your conversion ratio stable?
- Number of Sales Opportunities: What is your potential purchase volume?
- Sales Opportunity Score: Do you prioritize your sales opportunities?
- Average Purchase Value: Is your average purchase value sustainable?
- Revenue per Sales Rep: How much revenue do your sales rep bring?
- Profit Margin per Sales Rep: Is your sales team profitable as expected?
- Upsell & Cross-Sell Rates: How do you increase your revenue and ROI?
- Incremental Sales by Campaign: Which campaign brings you the best results?
Another states :
Here are 18 of the top sales KPIs used by modern sales teams. Some of these sales KPIs may have overlapping qualities. The effectiveness and selection of each KPI should always depend on the business and marketing and sales models that are in place. Learn how to define your organization's KPIs.
- Trials
- Sales Qualified Leads
- Sales Opportunities
- Number of Monthly Onboarding and Demo Calls
- Call Volume per Rep
- Sales Cycle Length
- Sales per Rep
- Contact to Customer Conversion Rate
- Trial Conversion Rate
- Sales Bookings
- Lead-to-Win Rate
- Average Cost per Lead
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Average Selling Price
- MRR Growth Rate
- New and Expansion MRR
- Customer Lifetime Value
- Retention and Churn Rates