These Sales Techniques are a selection of those taught in SalesSense training courses

We use the term, Sales Techniques to describe practices employed to improve communication and increase influence in sales situations. Techniques involved in problem solving, planning, methodology, and organisation are are discussed elsewhere on this site.

Techniques employed during sales messaging, online posting, email exchanges, and conversations are listed here. We have divided this overview into four sections.

Online Sales Techniques

• How to locate the online forums and discussion groups that the right sales prospects frequent.
• How to find and track particular people online.
• How to establish credibility in an online forum without bragging and even without a record of performance.
• How to obtain an introduction via known and unknown intermediaries.
• How to transition the unacknowledged dialogue from a virtual setting to a real exchange

Email and Letter Sales Techniques

• Staying in touch with a large number of professional contacts
• How to use a story to engage attention.
• How to use a compelling example to engage attention.
• How to provoke an internal discussion of your solution, as a means of gaining attention.
• How to choose exactly the right time to make an approach.
• How to make persistence easy to persist with.

Telephone Sales Techniques

• How to get any gatekeeper on your side.
• How to get the attention of the most scheduled and sceptical prospect.
• How to turn around fob off objections.
• How to turn around real objections.
• How to build rapport with listening skills.

Face to Face Sales Techniques

• How to make and excellent first impression, every time.
• How to establish rapport quickly.
• How to engender trust quickly.
• How to uncover the real issues a customer is grappling with.
• How to have the customer do the selling.
• How to find out what customers are prepared to spend, when they don't want to tell you.
• How to gain the cooperation of someone who is blocking access to key decision influencers.
• How to avoid the loss of access once a proposal or quotation is submitted.
• How to read peoples minds.
• How to turn around closing objections.
• How to negotiate terms.

Selling is about helping people do what they want to do and not about getting people to buy things they don't need.

Ask yourself the question, "am I doing what I most want to do right now?" Sometimes your answer might be 'yes'. More often, it is likely to be 'no'.

The sales person who can help people get more of what they want, do more of what they want to do, or be more like the person they want to be, adds real value and the same logic is multiplied where the entity is a business or an organisation.

Those who use their influence and ability to persuade as a means to help people achieve more of what they set out to, need not ponder the ethics of using sales techniques.