Gone are the days of “back-slapping, joke-telling, cigar-smoking salesmen” described in playwright Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play ‘Death of a Salesman’. I have been directly involved in “selling” for nearly forty years and belong to a group that has experienced the transformation from traditional selling to modern-day selling. Being in the field of selling for a long time and being a part of the change, I am somewhat passionate about the subject.
Even when I started my career in sales in the late seventies as a junior, the image of salesmen, particularly those who were engaged in field sales were considered as cheerful, carefree, and confident individuals who exaggerate and overstate facts in order to sell. While some of those opinions are reasonable, some others were unjustifiable. As a salesman of yesteryear, I have a different personal opinion on those descriptions.
Although the times have changed and the strategies are modern, the importance of the subject of selling remains the same. I have stressed many times in my previous columns that revenue generated by sales is the lifeblood of an organisation. Therefore, the priority given to the sales staff by organisations has not changed with time. It is only practices that have transformed into modern selling methods.
Pertinent question
The pertinent question is whether the tactics and techniques of traditional selling practices are needed today or not? My confident answer is in the affirmative. For example, there are many ways in the modern computerised market to generate leads more effectively and easily. However, the approach, presentation, and objection handling, the salesman needs to do must contain the characteristics of the conventional selling method. What we have learnt and performed nearly four decades ago as field salesmen are still very much valid in a face-to-face meeting with a customer.
However, the role of the modern salesperson is different from a traditional salesman, particularly with the freely available digital technology knowledge. Buyers also are more advanced, better informed, and more demanding than in the 1970s to 1990s era.
During that period, the approach was salesperson-oriented where the salesman had more leverage to convince and close a sale by working on the then selling process. The goal was to complete a sale with a somewhat inflexible approach. The success was attributed to the salesperson’s effort, skill, client adaptation, friendliness, knowledge, and more importantly the relationship with the customer.
In contrast, modern selling is predominantly based on a customer-oriented approach. The needs have become more complex and the market demand also has risen. The modern salesperson has no alternative but to be exceedingly thorough about the product and the competition.
With the presence of the internet, information flow had been more accurate and descriptive about any product or service available in the market. Therefore, while the new strategies on lead generation, relationship management, follow-ups are done through technology, physical approach, presentations, demonstrations, managing objections must be done through the conventional method.
The key factor to remember is that there is no best approach for selling as it is a heavily subjective matter depending on the selling situation and the customer. The best according to my experience is a mix of both old and new approaches. As discussed earlier in the article, certain teachings of the conventional selling process are suited to even today, whilst a well-balanced combination can be more productive.
Internet
Pre-approach, or researching a customer before a sales call is an important step in the selling process. During the pre-internet era, salesmen spent a lot of time and energy to go through sources to find out details about customers. Today, in the data-driven world, this task has become much easier. Besides, the data gathered through the internet can be more accurate. The accuracy and the skill in approaching a customer in a face to face meeting or a teleselling situation have not changed.
The salesperson has to follow the principles learnt or trained in traditional selling. However, the difference is that the modern salesman can provide more details, often more accurately, before or after the first meeting with the customer.
The old school heavily limits the time that can be spent with a customer as the customer himself decides the time allocated to the salesman. In contrast, in modern selling, the salesman can provide details digitally to a customer long after the first meeting, perhaps until the buying decision is made.
In the product-oriented conventional selling, the salesman makes a presentation through a canned or stimulus-response approach where the product features, prices, advantages, and benefits are submitted on a pre-planned strategy. However, in this digital era, such practices are considered obsolete and impractical. The modern salesman has to approach the customer with better-prepared information and material. Unlike in bygone days, the salespeople must present the product or service as an investment with value conversations rather than offering merely a product or service.
When practicing traditional selling approaches, the salesperson usually controls the content of the conversation. Today, selling is deeply solution-focused and needs the salesman’s undivided attention as an advisor to help the buying decision. The salesperson today has to precisely understand the prospect’s buying decision situation before asking questions or making recommendations.
In contemporary selling, the salesperson needs to undertake a number of responsibilities and accept them as parts of the new sales process. Key among them is that they must possess the sales knowledge about the market, industry, product or service, and particularly the competition as the customer also can be holding accurate details of all these areas.
The foremost responsibility of the modern salesman is to act as a problem solver to identify and suggest solutions to the customers’ requirements.
Whether selling methods are new or old, understanding the customer’s wants as well as needs is the main criteria to solve a problem. Explaining and assessing features, advantages, and benefits to a customer is the responsibility of the salesman. Currently, this is done together with the customer with shared knowledge and opinion.
Communication systems and methods of the modern world have advanced tremendously during the past two decades. Previously, the customer did not have too many choices other than listening to the salesperson’s presentation and the details therein.
This made the skill of the salesman more important than other factors in a selling situation. Nevertheless, today’s salesperson mostly has to confront more informed, more demanding, and more advanced customers.
Inadequate
Simply expressing oneself is inadequate as in the past and the modern salesman has to perform a wider task. Currently, with the advanced information flow, the salesmen themselves have become the tip of the iceberg.
Hence, the entire communication process with any individual customer must be orchestrated well before the first meeting.
The modern salesman has to learn to pursue research-oriented components related to the customer and his needs and wants. Although the pre-approach is more convenient today due to the availability of digital information, the research must be thorough to match the customer’s own knowledge.
The salespeople deal with all kinds of individuals, most often all day, and every day. Therefore, they need to understand how people behave, think, feel, and act. They must be able to get into the shoes of the customer and understand their respective individual behaviour. Hence, the salesman has to act as a behavioural psychologist in order to be a professional.
Buyers ‘do not want to be sold’. This was a certainty, perhaps since the inception of the concept of selling.
This also is one of the most fundamental theories in selling. Today, the phenomenon is more intensely applicable due to the vast knowledge customers may possess. Therefore, a balance between old and new selling techniques must be available for the salespeople.