Sales, or the activity of selling, forms an integral part of commercial activity. As a practical implementation of marketing, it often forms a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salesmen (singular: salesman or salesperson).

The successful communication of the necessary information that encourages an individual to make a purchase is the responsibility of the sales person or the sales engine (e.g. internet, vending machine etc). Because of the natural reluctance of human beings to part company with something they currently own in exchange for something that MIGHT make their life better, the role of the salesman is often linked with excessive behavior and overstatement of product characteristics.

The primary function of sales is to find and close leads, turning prospective customers into actual ones.

From a marketing point of view, selling is one of the methods of promotion used by marketers. Other promotional techniques include advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations.

Moral strictures applied to marketeers often apply even more vigorously to those in sales. People selling second-hand cars, real estate or encyclopedias (of the non-Wikipedia variety) often come in for particular disdain. Sellers of snake oil have become stock figures for mirth at their quackery: they merge with the category of the confidence trickster or the carny.

The propensity of certain types of salespeople to treat customers badly can be attributed to greed, ignorance and game theory. Game theory says that if you play a zero-sum interaction only once without iteration, treating your customer as an adversary is the optimal strategy for your success. However a cooperative strategy such as tit-for-tat is best if ongoing dealings and interactions are expected. This insight is behind so-called consultative sales techniques which are used by Saturn to sell cars, as well as for most direct Business-to-Business sales.

Forms

Forms of selling include:

• Direct Sales - involving face-to-face contact
  • retail or consumer
  • door-to-door or travelling salesman
  • business-to-business
• Indirect - human-mediated but with direct contact
  • telemarketing or telesales
  • mail-order
• Electronic
  • web B2B, B2C
  • EDI
• Agency-based
  • consignment
  • multi-level marketing
  • sales agents (real estate, manufacturing)

See also

• Marketing, promotion, Contract of sale, list of marketing topics, sales techniques

Compare

• Trade, merchant

Sales is a commune of the Haute-Savoie département in France.