In today’s competitive and global business environment, knowledge is recognised as one of the most important strategic assets. Knowledge gives confidence and confidence gives a conviction.

Everyone is selling. Each day we spend maximum efforts in selling ourselves and our company’s product or services. But in today’s competitive market, you have to sell better than ever before.

The customers today are better informed and even competitors have become stiffer and more knowledgeable.

In today’s changed sales scenario, you have less and less time to spend with your customers. In fact, surveys indicate that a salesperson today, on an average, spends only two and a half hours a day in front of the prospects. The balance time is spent traveling, waiting, doing paperwork and other job-related tasks.

Obviously, you have to make every minute spent with the prospect count. The more skilled you are, the more sales happen. The increased sales result in more satisfied customers for your company and more success for you.

You have to hone your set of selling skills continuously and consciously and develop yourself. Today’s Sales Person has to be a Marketing Expert, a Prospector, a Time Manager, a Profit Centre, and a Consultant. You must be a Problem Solver not only for your company but also for your customer.  Both you and your customer have needs that can be satisfied with a successful sales interaction.

There is no one fixed formula for a successful need satisfaction selling. The only rule for a successful salesperson is “Flexibility”. With constantly changing needs, ideas and attitudes, problems also tend to change along with schedules, finances, and priorities.

A professional and a successful salesperson must, therefore, be prepared and flexible with his set of selling skills.

The world today is full of “Sales Coaches” and the internet has no shortage of sales blogs either. However, where everyone is riding the wave of service and social selling, the huge market of “Product Sales” is left unattended.

e-commerce and social selling have given new meaning to product sales when we talk about products like clothing, accessories, cosmetics and even these days pharmaceuticals. But that is just one tiny side of the humungous sales these businesses do.

The case sales percentage of product companies lies still in the world of offline sales and that is one art I have mastered in 28 years of working in offline sales in different capabilities, diverse industries, product segments and market areas all across the country.

With this blog I would like to contribute to the present generation of salespeople, different attributes, processes, and techniques, which would help them to sell more and master “The Art of Selling”.

In my next blog, I shall cover “The Four Essentials of Selling” that would just be a tip of the iceberg. These “Essentials” would be elaborated in my future blogs.

In the mean time if you have any feedback, comment, or request which you would like me to consider next, do drop me a line at [email protected] or simply comment below.