Selling and Bargaining Skills SS3 Marketing Lesson Note

Selling skills consist of a set of techniques used in selling of goods and providing of services. Knowing how to sell is a vital ingredient for marketing success. In simple terms, effective sales and negotiation techniques blend with talking to the right people and listening attentively to find out what they want to buy. 

Steps in selling skills 

The steps in effective selling skills are; 

1. Prospecting and qualifying:- This involves identification of potential qualified customers who are in need of the product a salesman is selling and has the ability to buy it. 
2. Pre-Approach:- It involves where the salesperson is gathering information about the prospects before making a sales call. Such information may include prospects’ background, income, purchasing power, habits, likes and dislikes and educational background. 
3. Requirement identification:- This is where the sales person is trying to determine prospects’ purchasing motives. This is known as “need analysis”. In this stage listening skills are big assets for the salesperson. 
4. Opening-Approach:- This involves where the salesperson meets with the prospective buyer. Here, the salesperson should try to put the prospect in a receptive frame of mind. 
5. Presentation/ Demonstration:- This involves where the salesperson presents the products and reveals their story to the prospects. 
6. Follow-Up:- Follow-up is the last step in which the salesperson follows up after the sales to create a close relationship with the buyer.
7. Bargaining Skills:- is a situation in which both the buyer and seller of goods or services enter into negotiation to dispute the price which will be paid for certain goods or services to reach a satisfactory agreement. 

Basic bargaining skills in the course of bargaining includes: 

1. Cut-down asking price:- This involves a skill used by prospective buyers to offer an alternative price to the price charged by the seller of the product and then spend some time on further negotiation. 
2. Pretend to walk away:- This involves where the buyer pretends to walk away, the price proposed by the seller is still unacceptable and outside his budget. Usually the buyer will be called back again and the price he offered may be considered by the seller of the product. 
3. Delay response to asking price:- This involves where the buyer takes some time when choosing and comparing the goods before proposing the price he wishes to buy the product.