Oxford Dictionary for the Business World
I started by consulting the Oxford Dictionary for the Business World where I found:
3 temporary offering of goods at reduced prices
On or for sale: Offered for purchase [Old English]"
I felt that only the first definition would fit with the subject of my course. Yet the "exchange of a commodity..." bothered me immensely. Although we see strong trends toward offerings become commodities ever faster, I could not see how I could my conviction that successful sales people by bringing value to their customers can curb this trend would fit with this definition.
So I tried the entry
"Sell-v.
4 sell (reflective) betray or prostitute for money
6 cause to be sold '(name alone sells well)
I did not think that this entry helped me further. So I tried the American Heritage Dictionary where sale is defined as "the exchange of goods or services for an amount of money or its equivalent [or] the act of selling". I liked this definition better than the one in the Oxford Dictionary, but I still felt that it did not describe much of what salespeople do.
Other References
After this excursion into the linguistic world, I finally concluded that I had to come up with my own definition telling more what sellers actually do. For this, I was inspired by what the students were told in the first semester of their program that selling essentially is communicating.
My Own
Building on this, I came up with this definition which I now use in the course:
- To the right person
- At the right moment
- About the right subject
So an informed decision can be made.
I feel that this definition is a good foundation for discussing sales process, sales methodology and relationship management, core topics of my course. My feeling seems to prove right. So far, this definition has helped tremendously giving a structure to the course. I will explain how in future posts.
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