Different types of sales roles and industries

Hello and welcome to the Introduction to Sales, a Beginner's Guide. I am your instructor, Tavishima Ayedi. I'm a sales coach, a business growth podcaster and a public speaker. Today we're going to be looking at the different types of sales roles and industries. This is still a part of a module, one on sales fundamentals, just in case you have listened to the previous episode. Now, before we begin, we have to tackle a bigger and more important sales distinction because a lot of people coming into the sales world will be thinking in terms of roles and industries.

They'll be thinking in terms of whether you're going to be selling into fashion or finance or consumer goods or those sorts of distinctions. But we have a much more important distinction to look at rather than looking at roles and industries. And that is we're going to be looking at the different sales contexts or the different sales situations, the different dynamics and the different scenarios that you are going to be selling in.

Because the key distinction is not whether you're selling consumer goods or whether you're selling finance, but that in some sales scenarios, you're going to be involved in a simple sale and in other sales scenarios, you're going to be involved in a complex sales scenario. And let me repeat that so that you can get the distinction. Simple sales versus complex sales scenarios, complex situations, complex dynamics. Now, what is the difference between a simple sales scenario and a complex sales context?

And the difference can be narrowed down to a couple of factors #1 we'd like to look at the nature of the product or the nature of the service in question. Most likely, if it is a commodity, you're dealing in something that is a simple sales scenario. Example that I like to give in Nigerian trainings when I'm live and in person is when I talk about the difference of trying to sell a Guzi versus trying to sell a car. The nature of a Guzi, which is an ordinary cooking ingredient in Nigeria, is that it is a simple commodity good that you can buy in the open market.

You go there, you price it, you take it or you leave it. So that is a commodity product. But there are some things that by their very nature are much more complex. So if you're selling financial products, like if you're trying to sell life insurance, it is a little bit more complex because the buyer has to consider lots of different things when it comes to making up their mind that if you are buying a Gucci, if you're going to buy a Gucci in the market, the primary thing that people will be thinking about would be price.

If you're thinking about insurance, you're thinking about things like how much you want to save, how much money you need for your day-to-day. You're trying to do actuarial calculations, how long do you think you have left to live? How much money do you want to leave behind for your beneficiaries, and those sorts of considerations. So some products by their very nature are simple in themselves. And when you are involved in that kind of situation, like buying a Gucci, that is a simple sales context or a simple sales scenario.

If you are involved in a product or a service that involves lots of moving parts like selling insurance, sorry, like buying insurance or trying to buy a car, you're involved in a much more complex scenario. Then there's also the matter of how much personalization is required. When you are trying to sell something as simple as a goosey or other commodities that you can buy in the market, very little personalization is required.

All you have to do is to address the person in a friendly, informal manner, and that is all the personalization that you need. But if you're going to sells insurance to someone, you need a high level of personalization that is required. I'm going to have to know more than just being friendly. I'm going to know beyond the person's name. I'm going to need know the person's date of birth, for instance, the person's occupation, the person's saving or investing threshold, ideas that the person has concerning estate planning and all those sorts of things.

Those are the kinds of things that I'm going to need to know and to personalise before I can make a good sale. When it comes to selling someone insurance, so simple sales scenarios, very little personalization is required. All you have to do is to be a human being, be decent and smile. Complex sales scenarios, on the other hand, a lot of personalization is going to be required. So you're going to have to know a lot about the person, and you can think about all these distinctions, whether you're talking about a goosey or cutting grass or selling cars or selling consultancy services.

You can see that the nature of complexity changes as we move up the scope and we can see that the level of personalization required also changes. If you're going to cut grass for someone, I guess all you need to know is the size of the land and a fair sense of how many man hours are required to cut it. Or if you're going to use one of those motorized cutting implements, how much fuel that you need to cut it? Very little personalization is required there.

But if you're going to sell consultancy services, that's a different ball game altogether. It's going to be highly personalized according to their context, according to their needs, and according to the problems that they tried to solve. Now, another distinction between simple and complex sales scenarios is this the price. The more simple you are in a sales scenario, the more the price is going to be affordable or cheap, depending on how you look at it.

Now, the more complex the scenario is, the more the price is going to be pricey or expensive, however it is that you choose to look at it. Back to the examples that we have discussed so far, we can see that whether we're talking about a goosey or cutting grass or selling cars or selling consultancy services, we can see that there's a wide range of prices that we have to go through from affordable all the way to expensive.

Another key distinction between simple and complex sales is the number of parties that are going to be involved or the number of people whose considerations ought to be sought when you are trying to close the deal. When you're trying to buy simple commodities like cooking ingredients or igusi, the number of parties involved are usually one, in most cases two. So if you send a harpless husband to the market to buy igusi, in this case, he is the only person whose decision has to be made.

If he cannot quite make up his mind, he'll pick up his phone and he will call his wife. So from the point of view of the person selling a Gucci, you're normally dealing with one person. At most you're dealing with two people. But then when it comes to complex sales, the number of considerations that have to be involved are usually multiple. Now let's go back to the example of selling life insurance. Yes, you are talking to one person, the policy holder,

whether it's the husband or the wife. Well, most likely the policy holder might like to consult with his parents, her parents or siblings or spouse or lawyer or financial planner. You can see that the number of considerations that are being sought in this case increase and increase and go higher and higher. So for simple sales scenario, one person, maybe two people Max. For complex sales scenarios, the number of people that you have to consider it increases.

And it's the same if you are in real estate. The number of people that ought to be considered increases. Because yes, the person who is in front of you might be able to authorize the purchase himself or herself. But most likely they're going to want to consider a spouse, consider their financial situation, maybe speak to their own lawyer or their children, their siblings, those sorts of things. And then another thing that we have to consider when it comes to simple versus complex relationships is the necessity for relationships.

Like I pointed out, for simple commodities, it's take it or leave it. If the price is 3500 naira, you either can afford it or you can't take it or leave it. But then when it comes to selling much more complex things, there's a necessity for relationships to be maintained. Because if you buy a car from someone, you want to be able to claim a warranty or you want to be able to call someone to complain when some things are not working out, to see if you can get some help in trying to make this your purchase run better.

So the more complex the sales scenario is, the greater the need for maintaining relationships on the part of the buyer or on the part of the seller. In the next session, we are going to consider what the implications are for whether you have a simple sales scenario or a complex sales scenario. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I will catch you at the next episode.