Active sales - what is it? Nikolay Rysev, "Active sales". Active sales technology

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

The success of any business depends on the ability to communicate with customers and potential buyers. There is a tool for this - active sales. What is it - a set of techniques or a systemic mechanism? How to master the art of active sales and what determines the success of mastering their techniques?

The Essence of Active Selling

Active sales is most often referred to as a complex process associated with the market sale of a product or service: finding a client, determining his needs, creating an attractive offer, negotiating, making a deal and subsequent communication with the client. Their main difference from passive sales is that the latter do not imply access to the buyer - he comes by himself.

It is important that the employee of the company involved in the above-described cycle of interaction with the client understands the specifics of his position, knows what active sales are, that this is not just cash and settlement work, but a sequence of deliberate actions aimed at business growth. It is important not to impose, but to sell goods and services -the buyer should feel first of all the partner. Here the manager will need a whole set of personal qualities - the ability to negotiate, find compromises, find common interests with the client and maintain a friendly communication mode.

The subtle art of active selling

Experts believe that the most important qualities of a manager involved in the sale of goods and services are the development of working methods, the willingness to identify which active sales technique is most effective, and also to build a system model for their use. So, for example, having successfully used a technique that allowed starting a telephone conversation with a client (in which the interlocutor agrees to take a few minutes to communicate with the manager), you need to be able to interest the buyer, turn him from a potential into a real one.

It is very important, as experts say, to avoid one cunning trick of the interlocutor. Sometimes the client pretends to be very interested in communicating with the manager - this mainly happens when such behavior is prescribed by the corporate "code" of the employing company, which implies the priority of courtesy. The ability to identify such a buyer is a whole art, and one might say - a separate technique of active sales, a separate type of professional manager's toolkit.

How to sell a service?

Business supplies either goods or services to the market. The specifics of interaction with customers and potential buyers when working with both items of sale are different. Many experts believe that selling a service is muchmore difficult, since it is usually impossible to touch, taste, test and simply admire it as a product. Active sales of services is a type of activity that requires specific professional training. The manager, firstly, must have a real idea of the capabilities of his employer and not promise the client what the business cannot provide. Secondly, when selling a service, a specialist must take care of the subsequent word of mouth mechanism - that is, to achieve not a one-time result of work, but to feel further prospects for increasing demand. Thirdly, the manager must be able to somehow compensate for the noted shortcomings in handling services (the fact that they cannot be “felt”).

The best alternative is persuasion, literate and skillful. Another component of success is the ability to tell the truth, the willingness to disclose details about the product or service being sold by an active sales specialist. What brand is it, who makes it, why such a price - the buyer should know about all this.

Personnel sell everything

In the process of business growth, there comes a moment when a new division is needed in its structure - an active sales department. It is important for management to choose a competent path to the formation of this part of the company and, most importantly, staffing with qualified personnel. Much depends on the current tasks set for the business and the conditions for their solution.

For example, during the analysis of the situation, the management decided that it was necessary to actively attract newclients. Accordingly, it is necessary to select people with extensive experience in working with “cold calls” in the staff. Another option is that the market has a very low level of brand perception. Hence the task is to focus on repeat sales, so that each of the clients has a permanent association with the goods and services of the company. The main problem in the formation of the staff of sales managers is to determine the number of specialists, the scope of functions and the level of responsibility. Experts recommend that businessmen, on the one hand, start with small amounts of work with small forces, and on the other hand, keep a stack of resumes ready so that if sales go up, call new people.

Profession - manager

Actually, the main character in communication with the buyer is the manager. Experts identify several qualities of a person necessary to meet this position. Firstly, the manager must have motivation, which depends on the attitude to work, temperament, and the ability to set oneself up positively. Secondly, it is a wide range of personal qualities - maturity, self-confidence, emotional stability, flexibility, the ability to find compromises and solutions in non-standard cases, the ability to negotiate. Thirdly, the manager must have the ability to interest the client in a commercial offer, to know how to bypass the client's attempts to avoid dialogue. Countering objections is the most important professional quality in this vein, since most clients are initially not inclined to start a conversation with a stranger. The manager must be able to negotiate the most important thing - the price of the product or service being sold.

When saying no is part of the job

A manager involved in active sales is a person who, perhaps more often than people in most other professions, hears objections, denials and other attempts of the interlocutor to avoid a constructive dialogue. The ability to adequately perceive the word “no” is the most important quality of a sales specialist. Experts recommend that novice managers, firstly, treat denials as part of the job, as a norm, and secondly, learn to take such phenomena not too literally. The client often says “no” not because he has unequivocal objections to the purchase of goods and services, sometimes it is a psychological phenomenon that reflects specific emotions of a person. There are cases when a person who has refused a manager one or more times subsequently becomes a regular client of the company. It is important, experts say, to avoid automatically setting yourself up for a positive answer - this will help the sales specialist avoid psychological discomfort in cases where the client says “no”.

The best manager is a quiet "scout"

An exceptionally important quality of an active sales manager is the ability to ask questions to the client, to “scout out” the profile of his needs, to identify psychological and personal characteristics. Experts note that a limited percentage of specialists have this ability, and therefore this skill can become a good competitive advantage for a beginner."salesperson". The art of asking the right questions is closely intertwined with the ability to avoid voicing unnecessary phrases.

Therefore, if a manager is naturally talkative, this will certainly help him in his ability to become a “scout”, but it may interfere with building a meaningful, constructive dialogue with the buyer. When communicating with a client, a sales specialist should speak only to the point, revealing what the interlocutor really needs, and, most importantly, be able to listen to the client. It is important to make it clear to the buyer that time-consuming questions are asked for a reason. The buyer should not feel constrained, but on the contrary, he should see what benefits lie in such a phenomenon as active sales. That this is not just an attempt to sell something, but a method of building mutually beneficial relationships.

Learning is light

Mastering the basics of active sales is not only practice, but also theory, a diligent study of various authoring methods and materials. Among the sources popular among Russian managers are books (including in audio format), authored by Nikolay Rysev.

"Active sales" - this is the name of his works. They are published in several editions, written in a very simple and understandable style. They contain an in-depth analysis of several dozen strategies for successful sales, negotiation, and there are illustrative examples from practice. This book is a real find for professionals in the field of trade of various specializations. Salespeople, sales representatives, managers, executives, and even directors of various departments can read it and learn a lot of useful information.

Self-development is the key to success

A manager who has managed to implement a systematic approach to his profession gains access not just to a set of disparate methods - he has in his hands a whole technology of active sales that can be scaled into many areas. Achieving such a status implies, first of all, self-development. It lies in the ability and, most importantly, the desire to learn, to master something new in sales.

If an active sales manager knows how to prioritize these phenomena, this will allow him not only to improve himself, but also to correctly assess changes in the environment, work with new external factors (for example, if a particular type of product or services have fallen in demand or the target group of customers for some reason has lost its ability to pay). Another important property of a "salesperson" is to know his product, its objective strengths and weaknesses. The client must receive reliable information about the purchased products or services - this is an important condition for a long-term relationship between him and the business.