This is continuation for  Comment essay: Marketing.

Believing in your product

The first essay of #sales Accidentally (happy surprise) came from my team member Janette, and, side note,  I am happy I discovered this essay as it let me also reflect on the learning process of my colleagues during the sales challenge when I was the project lead. 

This essay makes a great point that for a sale to happen, it is crucial that the person who sells the product/service actually believes in it. The essay itself is very well written and shows that when a seller changes their perspective, believes the value of the product, and becomes so passionate about it that they themselves are influenced into making a purchase, that is when they will also be able to convince others to buy it too. I strongly believe and agree that in sales, it is about building a relationship, or in other words connection, with a customer (trust), and belief that you are not “taking money out of their pockets” but connecting them with good experiences ( and so –  sales is also in a way about helping ). A few of these reflections came from my personal memories of our shared experience in this, and from some suggestions from coaching that we did for our team while preparing for this challenge.

Overall, this essay is brilliant (not being biased). It shows a great learning process, as well as reflections of sales that are genuine.

Sales Drive – Eight points to consider

A great follow-up to the previous thought comes from this essay “Sales drive – eight points to consider” without an author. This essay reminds that it is important for a seller to be in good shape (physical, mental, emotional – that is: sleep well, motivate yourself, surround yourself with people who support your journey, exercise). For those who start with sales – read this essay. It will help you a lot. Input from my side, this essay reminded me how many no’s there are in sales, and that sales is very much about getting comfortable with rejection and balance between constant self-improvement and not taking negative experiences personally. Good essay.

12.5 principles of sales, are they only for sales reps?

Another essay without an author and a team. Even though this essay was rather short, I wanted to reflect on it in this essay for this line (quoted from the essay) -“If you can provide the customer what he or she wants, in the end, the price doesn’t have a significant role. Although some customers will buy price, the majority of them will buy value. It also depends on who is making the buying decision.” Two important key words – value over price, knowing who makes the decision of purchase. The writer of this essay reminds that this also comes when pricing your own product/service. When you consider the value first and price second, it is also easier to make a sale. Good reminder. Usually we forget this or think about value only when building our sales speech, but I think there should be something more into this. To really leave a positive impact on your consumer’s life so that they would like to buy again. Not everyone can achieve it, but… shouldn’t that be our goal?

Then I realized that my goal to read all of the Essays with #sales ended here, as there was nothing more to explore in English. Well, OK – let’s see #sales. In Finnish, it was the other way around – there were so many Essays on this topic that it was impossible to read them all. So, here are those that caught my eye within the first glance. 🙂

THE MAGIC WORDS OF SALES: HOW TO SELL TO US

I read this essay a few minutes after it was published on 29 October 2023. I remember I said “wow”.

This essay “THE MAGIC WORDS OF SALES: HOW TO SELL TO US?” ( for me it showed as “The magic words of sales: How to sell us?” – hope that this is close to the original ) and it is written by Iines Vänninmaja, Iiris Määttä and Ilona Pankko.

Honestly, even though I enjoyed the whole essay, I found their personal experience examples my favorite parts of this essay. It was great to read about different types of challenges their team faced during sales days, and I was smiling and thinking “what a great team” when they managed to overcome their own struggles by motivating each other, overcoming personal fears and worries of rejection. I think environment, team spirit, and celebration of success are very, very crucial to not only make the sales process more enjoyable but also to bring more rewards too.

My reflections from this essay:

• Sales has evolved A LOT during the last decades;
• Sales starts from knowing yourself – before we try to adjust our ways of selling to the people in front of us ( Italica because now it can also be figuratively), it is important to know your Personality strengths and weaknesses.
• Emotional Intelligence goes hand in hand with sales.
• It is important to follow, adapt and to get familiar with e-sales (plus how to make them more rewarding) *work in process…
• Consider how you can interact with your customer digitally (and how you can make it personalized).

Overall, great essay – recommend. I will come back to this again in the future.

I continued to read Essays in the Finnish side about sales (all of them were “wow”), and most of it made me realize how much there is still to learn. I read and read, but the reflection never came to continue this paper, and then I understood that this is the moment when I put a dot to my work. This is how much I have come to sales, and this is how much I can reflect. I have something stuck behind my nail, but that is nothing compared to how much there is to still learn.

If I read more, I would see how much more there is to “dig” and how little I actually know. That is true for my learning with sales, as well as marketing. Still, however, to “learn” those both – I need to “dig”.