From itinerant Yankee peddlers crisscrossing the U.S. after the Civil War to Dale Carnegie’s best-selling books on the art of salesmanship, American capitalism has often been driven by advances in the plying of wares. Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Death of a Salesman, placed the occupation at the heart of the American middle class and its longing for social mobility.
Now companies from software and health-care providers to manufacturers are radically remaking that model, shifting from expensive field staffs to more cost-efficient employees who use phones and computers to reach customers. Inside selling, which keeps pitchmen off the road, is growing far faster than in-person sales—and by some estimates it’s 10 times cheaper.
With virtual meeting software such as GoToMeeting.com and WebEx, communication tools such as Skype, and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, it’s become easier to sell with few if any face-to-face meetings.
About 46 percent of such employees are at company headquarters, about 37 percent work both at the office and at home, and 17 percent work fully at home, according to data compiled by consultants at Bridge Group. Inside sales workers have an average base salary of $53,000 and total compensation of $98,000, according to Bridge data.
Do you use a proven sales process?
Understanding and executing a proven sales process makes all the difference in face-to-face or virtual selling. Most salespeople fail because they don't understand the impact of their personalities on the person at the other end of the call....and....they are blindly 'winging it' by operating without a proven sales process methodology.
Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Everyone lives by selling something.” Yet most people don’t understand the sales process and their part within it. Business owners constantly worry about the selling function and how it affects their ability to manage the firm’s cash flow.
As a business coach, I don’t sell “coaching” but do sell the results or benefits of engaging in a coaching relationship: improved business management, sales & marketing, planning, productivity/effectiveness and leadership. I do sell the value of brainstorming with, being accountable to, being listened to, receiving encouragement from someone who brings an independent viewpoint to the conversation.
Just like me, you have to come up with how you help your customers get better at what they do (or want to do) through satisfying their wants and needs. When you do, you will know what selling is for your business.
Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, January 14, 2013 and "Ask the Coach"
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