Is sales a science?
I don’t think so. Sales is a skill, not a science.
Coming into our sales class, I felt as though it would be difficult to learn about sales. I have always thought that sales was very influenced by a person’s personality, and if someone doesn’t have the right personality for it, they aren’t going to be great at sales. In the first few weeks of class I have had that conception of sales mostly washed away, but not entirely.
When we discuss sales process and funnels sales take on almost a scientific dimension. In fact, diagrams of sales funnels seem very similar to diagrams of the scientific method hung in an elementary school classroom. It simplifies sales too much when taken completely at face value. Selling is not as easy as 1, 2, 3. It does take a personality dimension, a bedside manner if you will.
As we’ve discussed in class, sales really comes down to the relationship that you can establish with a potential client and solving their needs. In order to be successful in sales, you must build relationships with people and have a personable attitude in your interactions with them. This is definitely learnable, however. It will come to different people with different levels of ease, similar to accounting or baseball, and a person’s aptitude for this particular skill may not be equal to the person next to him. Sales funnels are incredibly useful to a salesman, but not if the salesman doesn’t have the right interactions with clients.
So, no, sales is not a science. It is learnable, and one can take scientific-like approaches to sales using processes and funnels, but without the right interpersonal skills they will be ineffective. Processes, funnels, and diagrams are tools in the tool belt of a salesperson, they may even be the tool belt, but those alone will not make the sale.
BoweryJE22
I agree that sales is definitely a skill. It simply can’t be reduced to a science due to the inherent personal aspect of sales. Like the author said, sales skills and tips can be developed but interpersonal skills can’t. It is definitely helpful though to study what makes effective selling, but implementing these skills and interacting personally simply must be learned through experience.
I Agree. Ultimately selling comes down to relationships and people and neither have been completely solved, people behave in weird ways and have weird motives etc. it would be nearly impossible to boil those complex and emotional situations down to a science.