Is Selling an Art or a Science?

by: Jon Gilge


I was recently asked this question:
Is selling, especially one-call close selling, an art or a science?
The following was my answer, which you may find informative as you seek to find balance in your sales approach between a strict adherence to a selling system and a more fluid interaction with your prospects.
At its core, selling is an engagement between the salesperson and the prospect, much like music is an engagement between musician and audience and a painting is an engagement between artist and viewer. While one can scientifically analyze music or visual art and break it down to its constituent parts; the notes, the rhythm, the contrast, the color, it cannot be recreated from those parts except through the skillful manipulation of the artist.
In very much the same way, selling can be broken down into its parts, and much can be learned from doing so, but to put those parts together in a convincing sales conversation requires the artful skill of a true sales professional. Without that art, the science of selling is no more than a collection of parts that will fail to engage the prospect and compel them to buy.
Therefore, sales will always primarily be an art because of the variability of the sales interaction will not allow for a process of rigidly fixed steps that one could classify as a science. It will, however, allow for the application of appropriate steps to the interaction, as they are needed to move the prospect through the process of buying. In this is the art; knowing when to apply the science that is the elements of selling- the particular skills, statements, questions, and responses- to the situation, and how exactly to do so.

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