Sales, Sales

The role of the salesman here is to over see that both parties receive an honest and fair deal, and is responsible to both.

The successful questioning to understand a customer's goal and requirements relevant to the product, the further creation of a valuable solution by communicating the necessary information that encourages a buyer to achieve their goal at an economic cost is the responsibility of the salesperson or the sales engine (e.g. internet, vending machine etc). A good salesman should never miss sell or over evaluate the customers requirements.

Marketing improves the selling environment and plays a very important role in sales. If the marketing department generates a potential customers list, it can be beneficial for sales. The marketing department's goal is to increase the number of interactions between potential customers and the sales team using promotional techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations, creating new sales channels, or creating new products (new product development), among other things.

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.

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.

They suggest that by effectively bringing more customers "through the door" and enticing them to contact you, sales organizations can dramatically improve their results, efficiency, profitability, and allow salespeople to provide a drastically higher level of customer service and satisfaction, instead of spending the majority of their working hours searching for someone to sell to.

For example, this may be possible in some B2C situations however, for many B2B organisations (for example industrial organisations) this is mostly impossible. Another dimension is the value of the goods being sold. Fast Moving Consumer Goods (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.

Source: Wikipedia > Sales