Once customers have entered your doors, the next step for you as a business is to effectively sell something.

Whatever business you are in, you must sell.  This is because selling is of utmost importance to the success of your business.

However, sales isn’t just convincing people that your product or service is fantastic.  Selling includes your image, your brand, and how well you serve your customers.

Dispite the negative ideas people associate with selling, sales just means you are selling stuff. Or maybe you are not…

To be clear about what sales is, you don’t even need to talk to someone to get them to buy.  You just need to have a good product or service and you need to put it in front of interested customers.

All of these previously mentioned things are part of the sales machine.

If you don’t have solid foundation of sales and marketing then your chances of success will plummet dramatically.

selling is important, selling works

Selling is more then important, it’s everything, let me explain why.

People think that that sales involves lying, swindling, and scamming the customer.  This is a huge misrepresentation of what sales is really is.  Ultimately, this isn’t how selling works at all.

To the contrary, the process of selling works best by skillfully meeting customer needs and wants. You can’t scam your customers and lie to them and expect them to come back to you.  It just doesn’t work this way.

I say this because many companies train their sales people to be overly agressive in selling.  Some companies think that the more the customer buys, the more successful the company will be.  This isn’t true. In order for your business to be profitable over time, you need customers to be able to afford what you are offering on a regular basis.

If you drain their pockets, customers will likely go somewhere else for the next purchase.

Trust is everything, Selling comes after

It’s important for selling to be profitable over the long term and not just at first contact.  This is how real selling and business works.  You can only do this by meeting customer needs and wants and by staying in their budget.

If you are still anxious and hesitant to sell remember that every time you buy its because someone has sold you something.

Companies sell to us every day whether we are aware of it or not.  Every image we see, or product we touch is a part of the sales process.

Sales is a part of life.  Without a sale happening, companies, cities and entire countries would be financially destroyed and we would have to revert back to the cavemen days.

Even the very clothes on our backs and the land we reside in are the result of a sale.

The economy works because someone made a product or service attractive enough for other people to buy.  Maybe we buy things because of its practical use, or its design, or its brand.  It doesn’t really matter why you buy a product, just remember that everytime you buy someone has sold something to you.

Selling is misunderstood

You may think I’m beating the point to death, but every time we come into contact with another human, we’re selling.

It may not be for currency, it may be for creating a good impression on your boss; or to convince your significant other the plans for the weekend. Or it may simply be showing  loved ones our affection.

Either way, thoughts and emotions are being “sold” like an actor who sells their performance.  The only difference is, in real life, it’s not just about business.  In life, it’s about proper communication and skillfully meeting the wants and needs of all parties.

In the context of business, the sales process is traditionally persuasive in nature coming from the salesperson should be supported by print, audio, or visual messages.

Nontraditionally though and outside the business context, sales is about trustworthiness, communication, listening, body language, and human connection.

But back to the traditional sales process.

As business owners, it’s our responsibility to  ensure that nontraditional values and communication are being  infused into the traditional persuasive selling.  In fact, its probably the most important part.

The best salesperson is the person who understands how selling works, why selling is important, and how can selling be profitable.

An expert in the art of selling is a fair person who understands the need for real human connection and is there to help the customer.  He or she also understands the selling process knows that although he can sell more, he will deliberatly stay within the needs, wants, and budget of the customer.