Sales

"You don't close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise."
- Patricia Fripp

A sale is the pinnacle activity involved in selling products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity.

The sale can be made through direct sales, agency-based sales, door-to-door, electronic sales, indirect mail-order sales etc.

Marketing and Sales are closely related as they have the same goal. If marketing increases the awareness of products through advertising, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, Sales will have a much easier job reaching and converting prospects to customers.

Sales will have different sales processes depending on the type of market and the type of products/services you offer.

For example, a typical process may be cold-calling a prospect, having a sales pitch, handling objections from the prospect, identify opportunities and closing the deal. A different process may be a self-service web site where the customer find it him/herself, chooses a product and pays with a credit card without any sales people directly involved.

A sales person needs to know the market, the products/services, the processes and the customers in order to maximize the potential for the sale. Any objections to the sale should be identified and solved/answered in advance, and all arguments for the sale should be known and adjusted depending on the prospect.

Did anyone mention information overload ?

Use PpcSoft iKnow as a light-weight CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool to aid in the sales effort or, if you already have an existing CRM system, use PpcSoft iKnow as a 'help manual' and aid for your CRM system.

If your existing CRM system covers all your needs
- then maybe you don't need PpcSoft iKnow after all.

If you still feel overwhelmed by the information overload
- try PpcSoft iKnow for free and see if it helps you or not.