Effective Personal Selling

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Effective Personal Selling

• 04/13/05

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Personal selling

• Two way flow of communication between a buyer and
  a seller, often in a face-face encounter,
  designed to influence a person or a groups
  purchase decision
• Role in marketing
• Critical link between firm and customers
• Represents the firm in customer view
• Particularly important under push marketing

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Attractiveness of Sales Careers

• The complexity and the challenge of the job
• Freedom of action and opportunities for personal
  initiatives
• Financial rewards
• Good opportunities for development and advancement

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Types of B-B jobs

• Order getting identify and obtain business from
  new customers
• Order taking processes routine orders for
  products that are already sold
• Sales support personnel
• Missionary selling promotional activities
• Sales engineers increase business from present
  customers by offering them technical or
  engineering assistance
• Team selling using an entire team to sell

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Time allocation between tasks
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Stages in the selling process

• Prospecting for customers
• Qualifying the prospect
• Pre-approach
• Approach
• Presentation
• Handling objections
• Closing the sale
• Follow up

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Prospecting

• Every sales person knows that prospecting is
• A core competency
• A sales fundamental
• Critical to increasing sales
• Hard work
• Carries a delayed payoff
• Means of prospecting
• Published data sources (e.g. Dun Bradstreet)
• Trade shows
• Referrals from current customers
• Cold canvassing

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Qualifying

• Check if the prospect qualifies as a worthwhile
  customer
• Does the prospect have need for my product?
• Will the sale be profitable to my company?
• Use open and close ended questions
• Companies may distinguish between hot, warm and
  cold prospects
• Hot prospects may be given to the field sales
  force while warm may be handled through
  telemarketing

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Pre-approach

• What do I want to accomplish?
• What do I know about the prospect?
• Size, markets, current suppliers, buying routines
• Where can I find information?
• Company records
• Other salespersons
• Customer employees
• Published information
• Observation

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Approach

• Gaining access
• Direct personal contact
• Phoning ahead/Personal letters
• Establishing rapport
• Know your product and your customers
• Listen to the customer

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Presentation

• Persuade the prospect to become a customer
• AIDA model
• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action
• Types of presentations
• Stimulus-response
• Formula selling/canned
• Need satisfaction

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Presentation

• Common complaints of sales presentations
• Running down competitors
• Being too aggressive or abrasive
• Have inadequate knowledge of competitors products
  and services
• Inadequate knowledge of our business/organization
• Poor delivery

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Handling objections

• Psychological objections
• Logical objections
• Patience, persistence

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Closing

• Obtaining final agreement to purchase
• Requires asking for the order
• Can be tested throughout the presentationTrial
  Close
• Requires understanding the prospect and buying
  process

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Follow up

• Excellent service after the sale bolsters
  customer loyalty
• Follow up on each sale to check satisfaction with
  
• The product
• Installation
• Training
• Maintenance
• Billing
• Satisfied customers Repeat customers

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Success factors

• Be flexible
• Understand the buying process
• Master the selling role
• Adjust to changing situational conditions
• Know how to satisfy the customer

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Sales management decisions

• Sales force organization
• Own vs. outsource
• If own, how to organize?
• Geography
• Account/customer
• Major account management
• Product
• Size of the sales force
• Workload method

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Sales management decisions

• Recruitment and selection
• Training
• Motivation
• Clear job description
• Effective management practices
• Personal need for achievement
• Proper compensation, incentives
• Compensation
• Straight salary
• Straight commission
• Combination

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Sales management decisions

• Evaluation and control
• Quantitative
• Behavioral