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!
