Knowledge Base | Sales

What the Salesperson can learn from the Souk

Whilst modern, sophisticated sales activities would consider themselves to be far away from the Souk they visit on holiday, there are many tips and tricks that a salesperson can learn from the way that sales are conducted in the Souk.  Our own recent foray into the Souk made us realise just how good the salesman’s selling skills actually were, as having been fleeced alive made us think about the process we had just witnessed - trying to work out how we came to buy a plate and a basket we didn't particularly like at a price way beyond it’s real value!  Maybe many of you will recognise the scenario?  What are the practical lessons a Sales Person can learn?  This Application Note gives some pointers, and breaks down the selling act into a series of proven steps and behaviours which anyone can learn.

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Marketing Generics Application Note:

How to Nail Price Relativities.  Pricing negotiation techniques

What should you do when the buyer says “This is the price I’ve got from the competition – what are you going to do about it?” Should you try and match the price, or are there some other techniques that will help you counter the buyer’s apparently powerful but actually flawed negotiating technique? The problem is that is unlikely at this stage that anyone really understands what the particular price the buyer is quoting really means. Because it all depends upon what the buyer will get for that money. And how does the performance that he is being offered really compare to his purchasing criteria? So there is no such thing as an absolute price. Only pricing relativities. This Application Note explains practical ways that you can nail the pricing discussion and find out the relativities.

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Marketing Generics Application Note:

Consultative Selling

We live in a world where significantly more B2B customers are increasingly looking for full service provisions, or solutions.  Whilst this is particularly prevalent in high-tech industries, it’s happening in across the board as business customers in diverse industries and applications want less and less to buy disparate and separate components and then have the responsibility for bolting all the bits together and making them work.  Increasingly buyers are looking for quick, turnkey and total solutions; outsourcing and managed solutions are some of the visible indicators of this trend.  This poses huge challenges for the vendor organisations, because it means they can no longer sell discrete components or modules, but have to build, sell, support and maintain entire solutions.  And this in turn completely changes the game for the sales force.  Salesmen, who knew their products and how to sell them, suddenly, find themselves operating in a new and altogether more challenging environment, and can find they lack the language, the tools, the knowledge and the skills to sell complete solutions.  Life in these situations has changed from transactional selling to consultative selling, and so the salesman must learn similarly evolve and adapt, or die.  This Application Note looks at implications for the sales force in a consultative selling world.

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