Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period.
In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.
It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded.
Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.
Selling also involves salespeople who possess a specific set of sales skills and the knowledge required to facilitate the exchange of value between buyers and sellers that is unique from marketing and advertising.
Within these three tenets, the following definition of professional selling is offered by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD): The holistic business system required to effectively develop, manage, enable, and execute a mutually beneficial, interpersonal exchange of goods or services for equitable value.
Team selling is "a group of people representing the sales department and other functional areas in the firm, such as finance, production, and research and development".
For example, an "inbound" campaign seeks to drive more customers "through the door", giving the sales department a better chance of selling their product to the consumer.
Fast-moving consumer-goods (FMCG) require no salespeople at the point of sale to get them to jump off the supermarket shelf and into the customer's trolley.
However, the purchase of large mining equipment worth millions of dollars will require a salesperson to manage the sales process – particularly in the face of competitors.
According to a report from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, only 40 percent of companies have formal programs, systems or processes in place to align and integrate the two critical functions.
With the increase of the use of the internet today, sales functions of several enterprises are finding traditional methods of marketing quite old fashioned and less efficient.
Glen Petersen's book The Profit Maximization Paradox[10] sees the changes in the competitive landscape between the 1950s and the time of writing as so dramatic that the complexity of choice, price, and opportunities for the customer forced this seemingly simple and integrated relationship between sales and marketing to change forever.
A sale can take place through face-to-face contact, via mail order, through a vending machine or through online selling.
The process involves equipping them with the knowledge, abilities, and skills needed to become more effective sales professionals.
Whilst remaining optional, the Commission's intention was to offer traders a means of breaking down barriers occasioned by the different legal systems of its (then) 28 Member States.
[17] A 2012 Communication from the Commission argued that a Common European Sales Law would help to address some of the concerns which it had identified in the development of a market for cloud computing services.