Sales has evolved from the traditional system most people are aware of to a quite more sophisticated system. The traditional system where the sales representative’s role is to persuade people to purchase goods and services are extinct and longer effective. Sales in today’s world is a completely different approach than the traditional method. It involves shifting from the product or service you want to be sold to focusing on the customer. Sales has to be value-based, with their mission to add as much value as possible to the customer. The most successful sales person is likely more of a listener than a talker. His or her model tilts toward establishing long term relationships with customers. It depends heavily on inter personal interactions between buyers to initiate, develop and enhance customer relationship. The communications set personal selling different from mass marketing (which involves advertising and sales promotion).Trust based selling primarily deals with a sales person or a sales team earning the customer’s trust, building a strategy to meet customers’ needs and building value. Rather than trying to maximize sales on a short run, trust based relationships focuses on solving customers’ issues, providing opportunities and adding value to the customers’ business over an extended period.
It has been established over previous chapters that sales people are more concerned with the delivery if value than just selling the product, but what constitutes value is dependent on the customers’ situation, needs and priorities, but a customers’ value is dependent on his or her perception; what they get in exchange for what they give up. However, it could also be complex like 1) does the sales person help me save or make money? 2) Is the sales person dependable? 3) Does the salesperson help achieve my strategic priorities? 4) Is the sales person easy to work with? Personal selling acknowledges that customers like to be heard. Previously, personal selling consisted of pressuring customers to buy a product without much appreciation to what customers actually need. Today, sales organizations are keenly interested in establishing a productive dialogue with customers rather than just pitching in products. The history of selling as an activity and the term “sales man” is dated back to the writings of “Plato”. People who earned a living through selling did not exist in a sizeable number prior to the industrial Revolution in England. The traditional sales strategy was done by the people who owned the products from the mid eighteenth to the nineteenth century.
Later in the middle age, the first door to door sales began in the middle ages, in form of peddlers. Peddlers sold farm produce gotten from farmers to townspeople, and bought manufactured goods from townspeople to the rural areas. Their primary functions were purchasing, assembling, sorting and redistribution of goods.
From the onset of the industrial evolution (eighteenth century), the need for sales people was on the increase. This was because economies became dependent on each other and international trade began to flourish, trade began to cross geographical boundaries. The need to reach more consumers called for an increasing number of sales people.
By the early nineteenth century, personal selling was well established In England, but just beginning to develop in North America. After 1850, it became a well- established practice. In the early twentieth century, an interesting time in American history where the economy began booming, the need for personal sellers began to increase as the selling played a crucial role from the agrarian economy to an economy of mass production and effective transportation. Between 1915 and 1945, the two world wars and the Great Depression occurred. The economy activity concentrated more on war efforts, so salespeople hardly needed revenue. Renewed prosperity in the Post — World War II era, the salespeople emerged as important employees. In the middle of the 1940s selling became more professional. Buyers began to demand more high pressured salespeople instead of well-informed salespeople. The salespersons in this era used every trick in the book to manipulate customers to buy a product without even considering their needs. But, an effective salesperson today is no longer a mere presenter and needs to be fully equipped to respond to a variety of customers’ needs. However, sales need to advance when it comes to ethical code, otherwise it will not be seen as a true profession by some individuals. Sales has a positive effect on the economy in two basic ways: They act as stimuli for economic transactions, and they further diffuse innovation. As the world evolves, business begin to encounter new problems such as globalization of businesses and more emphasis on customer satisfaction, it is expected that salespeople will be recognized as a key force to executing the appropriate strategies for survival and growth.
New innovated products and services reach the consumers through well- informed specialized salespeople, reach the early adopters. They usually encounter issues when introducing a new product or service to the consumers, but by encouraging them to purchase these products and services, they help to boost the economy.
CONCLUSION
Want to sell long term? try building trust, selling value and fulfilling the customer’s needs.
