A sale is the pinnacle activity involved in the selling Selling is offering to exchange something of value for something else. The something of value being offered may be tangible or intangible. The something else, usually money, is most often seen by the seller as being of equal or greater value than that being offered for sale. Another person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity.^{[1][not in citation given]}

The seller - the provider of the goods or services - completes a sale in response to an acquisition or to an appropriation^{[citation needed]} or to a request. There follows the passing of title (property or ownership) in the item, and the application and due settlement of a price, the obligation for which arises due to the seller's requirement to pass ownership. Ideally, a seller agrees upon a price at which he willingly parts with ownership of or any claim upon the item. The purchaser, though a party to the sale, does not execute the sale, only the seller does that. To be precise the sale completes prior to the payment and gives rise to the obligation of payment. If the seller completes the first two above stages (consent and passing ownership) of the sale prior to settlement of the price, the sale remains valid and gives rise to an obligation to pay.

Sales techniques

A sale can take place through:^[2]

• Direct sales, involving person to person contact
• Pro forma The term pro forma is a term applied to practices or documents that are done as a pure formality, perfunctory, or seek to satisfy the minimum requirements or to conform to a convention or doctrine. It has different meanings in different fields sales
• Agency-based
  • Sales agents (for example in real estate or in manufacturing)
  • Sales outsourcing Sales Outsourcing is the practice of having an external company become a virtual sales force for you. It is differentiated from value added resale in the usage of a "shared risk" model—that financing model requires both the client and the sales entity to invest in the actual sales program. This is differentiated from telemarketing in through direct branded representation
  • Transaction sales
  • Consultative sales A consultant is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law (tax law, in particular), human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public affairs, communication, engineering,
  • Complex sales Complex sales, also known as Enterprise sales, can refer to a method of trading sometimes used by organizations when procuring large contracts for goods and/or services where the customer takes control of the selling process by issuing a Request for Proposal and requiring a proposal response from previously identified or interested suppliers
  • Consignment Consignment is the act of consigning, which is placing a person or thing in the hand of another, but retaining ownership until the goods are sold or person is transferred. This may be done for shipping, transfer of prisoners, or for sale in a store
  • Telemarketing Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits to prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call or telesales
  • Retail Retailing consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be individuals or businesses. In commerce, a "retailer" or consumer
• Traveling salesman
  • Door-to-door Door-to-door is a sales technique in which a salesperson walks from the door of one house to the door of another trying to sell a product or service to the general public. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit. Door-to-door selling is usually methods
  • hawking A hawker is the name given to vendors in many areas of the world selling merchandise that can be easily transported; it is roughly synonymous with peddler or costermonger. In most places where the term is used, a hawker sells items of food that are native to the area. Whether stationary or mobile, hawkers usually advertise by lound street cries or
• Request for proposal A request for proposal is an early stage in a procurement process, issuing an invitation for suppliers, often through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific commodity or service. The RFP process brings structure to the procurement decision and allows the risks and benefits to be identified clearly upfront – An invitation for suppliers, through a bidding process, to submit a proposal on a specific product or service. An RFP usually represents part of a complex sales process, also known as "enterprise sales".
• Business-to-business Business-to-business describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. Contrasting terms are business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-government (B2G) – Business-to-business sales are much more relationship-based owing to the lack of emotional attachment^{[citation needed]} to the products in question. Industrial/professional sales involves selling from one business to another
• Electronic
  • Web – Business-to-business and business-to-consumer An example of a B2C transaction would be a person buying a pair of shoes from a retailer. The transactions that led to the shoes being available for purchase, that is the purchase of the leather, laces, rubber, etc. as well as the sale of the shoe from the shoemaker to the retailer would be considered transactions
  • Electronic Data Interchange Electronic data interchange is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents from one computer system to another, i.e. from one trading partner to another trading partner. It is more than mere e-mail; for instance, organizations might replace bills of lading and even (EDI) – A set of standard for structuring information to be electronically exchanged between and within businesses
• Indirect, human-mediated but with indirect contact
  • Mail-order Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer. The products are typically delivered directly to an address supplied
  • vending machine A vending machine provides snacks, beverages, lottery tickets, and other products to consumers without a cashier. Items sold via these machines vary by country and region
• Sales methods:
  • Selling technique All techniques borrow a bit from experience and mix in a bit of guesswork on the psychology of what motivates others to buy something offered to them. Mastery in the techniques of selling can offer very high incomes, while failure in it is nearly proverbial. Coverage of the latter is popularized in works such as Death of a Salesman and Glengarry
  • IMPACT Selling
  • SPIN Selling
  • Consultative selling
  • Sales enablement Sales enablement is the process of arming an organization’s sales force with access to the insight, experts, and information that will ultimately increase revenue. It is a term that has gained momentum in the last decade. It is often used to describe a variety of tools, processes and methodologies that are applied to enable a sales force, both
  • Solution selling Solution selling is a special approach to sales. Rather than just promoting an existing product, the salesperson focuses on the customer's pain and addresses the issue with his or her offerings (product and services). The resolution of the pain is what constitutes a true "solution"
  • Conceptual Selling
  • Strategic Selling
  • Sales Negotiation
  • Reverse Selling
  • Paint-the-Picture
  • The take away

Sales agents

Agents in the sales process can represent either of two parties in the sales process; for example:

1. Sales broker or Seller agency or seller agent: This is a traditional role where the salesman represents a person or company on the selling end of a deal
2. Buyers broker or Buyer brokerage: This is where the salesman represents the consumer making the purchase. This is most often applied in large transactions.
3. Disclosed dual agent:This is where the salesman represents both parties in the sale and acts as a mediator for the transaction. The role of the salesman here is to oversee that both parties receive an honest and fair deal, and is responsible to both.
4. Transaction broker: This is where the salesperson doesn't represent either party, but handles the transaction only. The seller owes no responsibility to either party getting a fair or honest deal, just that all of the papers are handled properly.
5. Sales outsourcing involves direct branded representation where the sales reps are recruited, hired, and managed by an external entity but hold quotas, represent themselves as the brand of the client, and report all activities (through their own sales management channels) back to the client. It is akin to a virtual extension of a sales force (see sales outsourcing Sales Outsourcing is the practice of having an external company become a virtual sales force for you. It is differentiated from value added resale in the usage of a "shared risk" model—that financing model requires both the client and the sales entity to invest in the actual sales program. This is differentiated from telemarketing in).
6. Sales managers: qualified and talented^{[peacock term]} sales managers aim to implement various sales strategies and management techniques in order to facilitate improved profits In accounting, profit is the difference between price and the costs of bringing to market whatever it is that is accounted as an enterprise in terms of the component costs of delivered goods and/or services and any operating or other expenses and increased sales volume. They are also responsible for coordinating the sales and marketing department as well as oversight concerning the fair Justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, fairness, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics and honest Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft execution of the sales process by their agents.
7. Salesmen: The primary function of professional sales is to generate and close leads A sales lead is the identity of a human or entity potentially interested in purchasing a product or service, and represents the first stage of a sales process. The lead may have a corporation or business associated with the person(s). Sales leads come from either marketing lead generation processes such as trade shows, direct marketing,, educate prospects, fill needs and satisfy wants of consumers appropriately, and therefore turn prospective customers into actual ones. Questioning - to understand a customer's goal and requirements relevant to the product - and the creation of a valuable solution by communicating the necessary information that encourages a buyer to achieve their goal at an economic cost comprise the functions of the salesperson or of the sales engine (for example, the Internet, a vending machine A vending machine provides snacks, beverages, lottery tickets, and other products to consumers without a cashier. Items sold via these machines vary by country and region, etc). A good salesman should never mis-sell or over-evaluate the customer's requirements.

The relationships between sales and marketing

Marketing Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves and sales differ greatly, but have the same goal. Marketing improves the selling Selling is offering to exchange something of value for something else. The something of value being offered may be tangible or intangible. The something else, usually money, is most often seen by the seller as being of equal or greater value than that being offered for sale. Another person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the environment and plays a very important role in sales. If the marketing department generates a list of potential customers, that can benefit sales. A marketing Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves department in an organization has the goal increasing the number of interactions between potential customers and the organization. Achieving this goal may involve the sales team using promotional techniques such as advertising Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals, or services. It includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade a target market to purchase or to consume that particular brand. These brands are usually, sales promotion Sales promotion is one of the four aspects of promotional mix. Media and non-media marketing communication are employed for a pre-determined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability. Examples include:, publicity Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject. The subjects of publicity include people , goods and services, organizations of all kinds, and works of art or entertainment, and public relations Public relations is a field concerned with maintaining public image for high-profile people, organizations, or programs. Public relations (PR) concerns professions working in public message shaping for the functions of communication, community relations, crisis management, customer relations, employee relations, government affairs, industry, creating new sales channels, or creating new products (new product development In business and engineering, new product development is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis), among other things. It can also include bringing the potential customer to visit the organization's website(s) for more information, or to contact the organization for more information, or to interact with the organization via social media such as Twitter Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to, Facebook Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500 million active users in July 2010.[N 1] Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks and blogs A blog is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a.

The relatively new^[when?] field of sales process engineering Sales process engineering has been described as “the systematic application of scientific and mathematical principles to achieve the practical goals of a particular sales process". Selden pointed out that in this context, sales referred to the output of a process involving a variety of functions across an organization, and not that of a “ views "sales" as the output of a larger system, not just as the output of one department. The larger system includes many functional areas within an organization. From this perspective, "sales" and "marketing" (among others, such as "customer service According to Jamier L. Scott. , “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation."") label for a number of processes whose inputs and outputs supply one another to varying degrees. In this context, improving an "output" (such as sales) involves studying and improving the broader sales process, as in any system, since the component functional areas interact and are interdependent^[3].

Most large corporations structure their marketing departments in a similar fashion to sales departments^{[citation needed]} and the managers of these teams must coordinate efforts in order to drive profits and business success. For example, an "inbound" focused campaign seeks to drive more customers "through the door", giving the sales department a better chance of selling their product to the consumer. A good marketing program would address any potential downsides as well.

The sales department would aim to improve the interaction between the customer and the sales facility or mechanism (example, web site) and/or salesperson. Sales management would break down the selling process and then increase the effectiveness of the discrete processes as well as the interaction between processes. For example, in many out-bound sales environments, the typical process includes out-bound calling, the sales pitch, handling objections, opportunity identification, and the close. Each step of the process has sales-related issues, skills, and training needs, as well as marketing solutions to improve each discrete step, as well as the whole process.

One further common complication of marketing involves the inability to measure results for a great deal of marketing initiatives. In essence, many marketing and advertising executives often lose sight of the objective of sales/revenue/profit, as they focus on establishing a creative/innovative program, without concern for the top Income statement, also referred as profit and loss statement , earnings statement, operating statement or statement of operations, is a company's financial statement that indicates how the revenue (money received from the sale of products and services before expenses are taken out, also known as the "top line") is transformed into the or bottom lines Net income equal to the income that a firm has after subtracting costs and expenses from the total revenue. Net income can be distributed among holders of common stock as a dividend or held by the firm as retained earnings. Net income is an accounting term. In some countries profit is the usual term.[citation needed] Often, the term income is - a fundamental pitfall of marketing for marketing's sake.

Many companies find it challenging to get marketing and sales on the same page.^{[citation needed]} The two departments, although different in nature, handle very similar concepts and have to work together for sales to be successful. Building a good relationship between the two that encourages communication can be the key to success - even in a down economy.^[4]

Marketing potentially negates the need for sales

Some sales authors and consultants contend that an expertly planned and executed marketing strategy may negate the need for outside sales entirely. They suggest that by effectively bringing more customers "through the door" and enticing them into contact, sales organizations can dramatically improve their results, efficiency, profitability, and allow salespeople to provide a drastically higher level of customer service According to Jamier L. Scott. , “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation." and satisfaction, instead of spending the majority of their working hours searching for someone to sell to.^[5]

Industrial marketing

The idea that marketing can potentially eliminate the need for sales people depends entirely on context. For example, this may be possible in some B2C An example of a B2C transaction would be a person buying a pair of shoes from a retailer. The transactions that led to the shoes being available for purchase, that is the purchase of the leather, laces, rubber, etc. as well as the sale of the shoe from the shoemaker to the retailer would be considered transactions situations; however, for many B2B Business-to-business describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. Contrasting terms are business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-government (B2G) transactions (for example, those invoving industrial organizations) this is mostly impossible.^{[citation needed]} Another dimension is the value of the goods being sold. Fast-moving consumer-goods Fast Moving Consumer Goods are products that are sold quickly at relatively low cost. Though the absolute profit made on FMCG products is relatively small, they generally sell in large quantities, so the cumulative profit on such products can be large (FMCG) require no sales people at the point of sale to get them to jump off the supermarket shelf and into the customer's trolley. However, the purchase of large mining equipment worth millions of dollars will require a sales person to manage the sales process - particularly in the face of competitors.

Sales and marketing alignment and integration

Another area of discussion involves the need for alignment and integration between corporate sales and marketing functions. According to a report from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, only 40 percent of companies have formal programs, systems or processes in place to align and integrate the two critical functions.

Traditionally, these two functions, as referenced above, have operated separately, left in siloed areas of tactical responsibility. Glen Petersen’s book The Profit Maximization Paradox^[6] sees the changes in the competitive landscape between the 1950s and the time of writing as so dramatic that the complexity of choice, price and opportunities for the customer forced this seemingly simple and integrated relationship between sales and marketing to change forever. Petersen goes on to highlight that salespeople spend approximately 40 percent of their time preparing customer-facing deliverables while leveraging less than 50 percent of the materials created by marketing, adding to perceptions that marketing is out of touch with the customer and that sales is resistant to messaging A message in its most general meaning is an object of communication. It is a vessel which provides information. Yet, it can also be this information. Therefore, its meaning is dependent upon the context in which it is used; the term may apply to both the information and its form. A communiqué is a brief report or statement released by a public and strategy Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. A marketing strategy should be centered around the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal.

Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and applications, commonly referred to^{[by whom?]} as Sales 2.0 Customer relationship management is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and tools, have also increasingly been created^{[by whom?]} to help align the goals and responsibilities of marketing and sales departments.^[7]

The sales cycle

• Pre-sales
• Kickoff
• Prospecting

See also

• Choice architecture Choice architecture describes the way in which decisions are influenced by how the choices are presented, and is a term used by Cass Sunstein and economist Richard Thaler in the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Parallels are drawn between choice architecture and traditional architecture
• Customer service
• Demand chain
• Point of sale
• Retailing
• Sales (accounting)
• Sales Incentive Plan
• Sales process engineering
• Sales management
• Sales variance
• Selling
• Sullivan nod
• Trade
• Transaction
• Sales Territory
• vendor

Notes and references

1. ^ "Sales". dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sales. Retrieved 2007-04-07.
2. ^ Compendium of Professional Selling. United Professional Sales Association. ?. ISBN ?. http://www.upsa-intl.org/index-4-cops.htm.
3. ^ Paul H. Selden (December 1998). "Sales Process Engineering: An Emerging Quality Application". Quality Progress: 59–63.
4. ^ "Sales Vs Marketing - The Battle of the Words?". ezinearticles.com. http://www.business-opportunities-internetonline.com/blog/2009/01/19/sales-vs-marketing-the-battle-of-the-words/. Retrieved 2009-02-04.
5. ^ Rumbauskas, Frank (2006). Never Cold Call Again. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 192. ISBN 0471786799. Page image [1]
6. ^ Petersen, Glen S. (2008). The Profit Maximization Paradox: Cracking the Marketing/Sales Alignment Code. Booksurge Llc. pp. 176. ISBN 9781419691799.
7. ^ Wood Thorogood, Pelin and Gschwandtner, Gerhard. InsideCRM, Nov 25, 2008 "Sales 2.0: How Will It Improve Your Business?"

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