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There are a few common sales terms that are helpful to know if you just started out in
sales. Many of these you may have already heard, but even so it's worth a refresher.
Let's start with a little bit of history. In the late 1800s, advertising pioneer E.
St. Elmo Lewis coined a legendary sales acronym called AIDA, which was his observation of
the phases that a potential buyer experiences before deciding to buy something. The letters
AIDA stand for Awareness, which means being aware of the product in question. I and D
represent interest and desire, which is something that a salesperson can either create through
the art of selling, or it happens naturally like when the iPhone first came out. In other
words, good products sell themselves. And lastly Action, the move by the person to buy
the product. Let's discuss some other terms as well. Prospects are the individuals, or
companies, that you target to become potential buyers. Cold calling means reaching out to
new and untested prospects with whom you've never done business, this is quite possibly
the hardest facet of a career in sales. A gatekeeper is a person who is trained to keep
the cold callers from being connected with the decision-maker at a firm. The unique selling
proposition is a perceived specific characteristic that makes one product stand out ahead of
its competition. Then there are a couple of things that we discussed earlier. B2B means
business to business, and that means a company doing business with another company such as
a janitorial service that cleans an office building. B2C means a business selling to
a consumer, and let's not forget networking. Networking is the marketing and sales term
that describes how you interact with others in social situations. They could be arbitrary
or deliberately stage selling opportunities with groups of people, think Tupperware parties.
And one last term, CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Management. That's a common process
where existing customers are managed in a high touch way to keep good customers and
not to lose them. You'll hear a lot of other terms as you get into the sales field, and
many terms will be unique to your industry or company. One of the best things you can
do is ask questions. If someone uses a phrase you don't know, don't hesitate for a moment
to ask them well what does that mean. This is how I've garnered most of my knowledge
in the field of sales.