An excerpt from our sales training free business resource The Ultimate Guide to Sales Techniques that Work, here are some insights in to common sales techniques:

Every good salesperson tends to have their own style of how they approach selling their product or service. Typically there are better approaches per industry (and even per prospect), but we do encourage selling from a genuine place of integrity and honesty. Steer clear from lying about your product or pricing, don’t deceive your prospects, and stay far away from overwhelming or pressuring your prospects in to trying to sell them something that they don’t need or want.

Remember: You’re not only trying to sell something, but your end goal is to create a loyal customer who happily promotes your business for you. Referrals are of the utmost importance.

COMMON SALES APPROACHES

• RELATIONSHIP SELLING: This approach to sales is one that’s based upon building a trusting, genuine relationship with your prospect. In good relationship selling, the salesperson has a keen knack for truly listening to their prospects. Rather than delivering a stale elevator pitch, a salesperson will ask good questions to truly understand the needs, wants, pain points and reasoning behind their potential buyer and how their product or service could really help them. Relationship selling creates the foundation for repeat buyers who double as promoters, recommending your company and products to their friends, co-workers and family members.

• SOLUTION SELLING: This approach centers around the prospects pain points and plays in to the salesperson’s problem solving skills. By having a deep understanding of the problem or problems that his or her prospect faces, a good salesperson will be able to come up with valuable solutions based on the product or service they are selling. By answering the prospects needs and problems with valid information, statistics, data or customer stories, the salesperson will not only close a sell, but help a customer.

• CONSULTATIVE SELLING: An approach that can sometimes take a bit longer to close the deal, a consultative sales approach allows the salesperson to learn about the customer’s needs before pushing their product. This approach is all about the communication between the salesperson and their prospect, with the salesperson typically asking more questions to try and get meaningful answers in order to create more of a personalized solution for their prospect. 

• SOFT SELLING: Focused on relationship-building, soft selling tends to be a subtle way of promoting a product or service without it being too “in your face.” A soft sale can include educational blog posts to personal stories that hint towards the product or service. The prospect does not feel pressure to purchase, but rather they are gently led to that outcome through passive actions on the part of the salesperson.

• HARD SELLING: An approach to stay away from, hard selling puts a hefty amount of pressure on the prospect. This approach is what gives salespeople a bad reputation, and it’s one tactic that is typically frowned upon by most sales managers. With a hard sell, a salesperson will try to bully a prospect into buying, either by psychology, baiting or downright deceiving them with false safety statistics or inaccurate deadlines. A hard sell tends to come from a place of intense tension and desperation on the salesperson’s part, so it’s generally very easy to feel when someone is using this approach.

Interested in learning more about sales secrets from inside the industry? Download our free Ultimate Guide to Sales Techniques that Work from our sales training Free Business Resources Section. You’ll learn more useful tips to becoming a great salesperson.