Selling Options

Have you ever noticed that sales people are among the most highest paid within many organizations? The reason is fairly simple: selling is crucial AND difficult to master. As a new business, one of the first decisions you need to make is your selling strategy and which route(s) make most sense to pursue.

SmallBusiness.com outlines the following different options:

Direct Sales: involving face-to-face contact

• retail or consumer
• door-to-door or traveling salesman
• party plan

Industrial/Professional Sales: selling from one business to another

• business-to-business

Indirect: human-mediated but with indirect contact

• telemarketing or telesales
• mail-order

Electronic

• web B2B, B2C
• EDI

Agency-based

• consignment
• multi-level marketing
• sales agents (real estate, manufacturing)

When you are developing your sales strategy, it is helpful to see what avenues your competitors are taking. However, it sometimes can give you a competitive edge to go against the norm. A good example is Cabi, a custom-designed clothing line for women formed in 2001. Instead of selling the traditional way via retail stores, Cabi sells exclusively through home-based consultants (i.e. the Tupperware way) and appears to be very successful thus far!