The Evolution of Selling

From the start, I had always imagined sales the same way. I have always imagined a salesperson going door-to-door and making cold calls, all-equipped with fake enthusiasm and some canned sales pitch. Instead of this usual trope of the salesman, I quickly learned through my marketing classes that this is not the case whatsoever, as sales is not just about gaining profit, but it is about creating a relationship with the customer. Selling has gone through an evolution, with it changing its orientation, focus and techniques along the way.

Production orientation

In the beginning, it the key issue was to make people aware of product and what it could do. Canned sales pitches were written down and salespeople had to follow without deviation. In this, the objective was to make sales and satisfy short-term seller needs. It was all about taking orders and delivering goods.

Sales Orientation

With this orientation, the objective was still to make sales and satisfy short-term seller needs, but the role of the salesperson changed. They were now a persuader instead of just an information provider. Their job was to aggressively convince buyers to buy products.

Marketing Orientation

This has created customer focus that increases awareness of the buyer’s needs. The objective is to actually satisfy customer needs, but only short term needs. Their role is to be a problem solver and match available offerings to buyer needs/

Partnering Orientation

This is where companies make strategic choices about the type of selling best suited to situation. It is all about building meaningful and long-term relationships to benefit both the customer and seller. The seller works to creating new alternatives & match buyer needs with seller capabilities.

Sales have truly evolved from taking orders through persuading customers to building partnerships. Personal selling relies on interactions between buyers and sellers, and working to actually help the buyer.