There is a difference between marketing and selling. Marketing is an approach to business that seeks to identify, anticipate and satisfy customer’s needs. It is a human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes.
Selling, on the other hand, is all about persuading customers to acquire the products and services which best match their needs at a profit to the organisation. It is an art in handling unexpected situations you meet in the process of selling.
What makes selling work/effective?
Professionalism
To sell, you have the master the right skills and these include presentation, personal branding, persuasion, communication, attention to details, customer psychology and self mastery.
Attitude
You can’t sell with the wrong attitude or mindset. A sales person has to be very optimistic. You go into the market with the assurance that you would make sales. Every though customer is king, the salesman needs to know that if one customer goes, another would come. There would be good days and there would be bad days but the salesperson must maintain the right attitude.
Efficiency/Effective
It is impossible to sell if you are less efficient or effective. A good salesman must be up and doing ensuring that he/she meets target. The salesperson must be organised, resourceful and proactive. Selling is not about techniques alone, it is about the right strategy. Knowing the target customers, their needs and their location. For example, food vendors apply this strategy. They are usually spotted in traffic. You would hardly find them off peak periods. It is during the rush hours where there is high influx of people going about their various businesses that the food vendors are found. That way they make sales. They also have present their food and them selves appealing. Nobody would buy from a scruffy food vendor who has food surrounded by flies. The food vendor has to be active, in the sense swift and calculative to spot customers. At the end of the day, he/she would record sales. However, the one that sits doing nothing waiting for a big miracle or one random customer to pass by, he/she would make no sales. This is the difference between efficiency and inefficiency.