Any sales man worth his salt will tell you that sales is not a one tricky pony. According to Clinton Obura, Director of Business Development and Growth at Elephant Healthcare, there are several strategies one could pick from depending on their product and type of business. In this article, we will summarize the four most notable Sales models.

Sales service Model 

This is where the customer can purchase a product on their own. Here a customer does not go through a sales agent. They go through the product online or in a store and make a decision on their own. This is the cheapest sales strategy, and works best for simple, mass market products that do not encompass complex facets.

Inside Sales Model

This is where a prospective buyer is nurtured by a sales representative into making a deal. Here, however there is no physical meeting.  The sales representatives get through to the customers via phone calls, email, chat et cetera. This works best for simple transactions that do not deal with huge amounts of money, but where the customer still requires some guidance to make a decision. Off the shelf software products or basic services like insurance come to mind.

Field Sales Model

This requires a full scale sales based organization. Here, physical meetings are paramount.  This model is appropriate for complex products with very high costs. They are mostly low volume deals with long sales cycles. Enterprise software or high priced machinery come to mind.

Channel Sales Model

This one involves using an outside agency or partner to sell your product. This one is hard to build as it can be difficult to recruit and educate agents who effectively sell your product. This model takes time to build as it requires a high level of trust but if done effectively, works quite well if good measures of understanding and accountability are put in place. Franchisees and resellers come to mind.

Models vary according to different products and structures of organization.  Some organizations use all channels. Others use the Self-service Model while their product might need a human touch. Some organizations do not know that other models exist so they stick to the ones they know. Choose your model wisely and watch your sales Soar.

Clinton Obura was a facilitator at Un.thinkable masterclass (our quarterly 10X Growth Leaders Workshop) in July 2020. Click here to apply for membership in Un.thinkable.