English Learning Guide

Competency 2
Unit 1: Customer Service
Workshop 3
Centro de Servicios Financieros- CSF

Name: Cohort: Date:

Training program: Instructor:

DESCRIBING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

This workshop attempts to help you improve your basic interaction with others at your workplace,
sharing personal information, identifying formal and informal communication, and asking and
giving information on phone calls your coworkers and you will learn about customer service,
offering and describing products and services, and how to interact with others at your workplace.

Objective from the development of these activities, you will be able to offer customers your
company’s services and products.

1. Work in groups and discuss the following questions:

- What do you think it is a product?
- What do you think it is a service?
- Describe companies you know that offer products and/or services.

2. Skills practice: do the following activities to practice the learnt vocabulary and English
structures.

2.1. Listening practice: Video about product or service description 1

Watch the following video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHrxP-mTJt4

Before watching the video, identify the following vocabulary:

Product Trademark Need state Development
Service Competitors Consumer cycle
Description patent-pending End/ultimate Development
Market Stock consumer goals Sale
Functionality Benefits Manufacturing Specifications
Different Solutions details Pricing structure
Unique Margin Analysis
Exclusive
Patent

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Taken From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHrxP-mTJt4 Used by SENA for academic purposes, exclusively.
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English Learning Guide
Competency 2
Unit 1: Customer Service
Workshop 3
Centro de Servicios Financieros- CSF

Watch the video, make some notes and answer the following questions:

- Which are the three basic questions you need to ask yourself to describe your product or
service?

________________________________________________________________________________

- What is it important to have to make your product or service exclusive?

________________________________________________________________________________

- What makes the mousetrap an exclusive product?

________________________________________________________________________________

- Explain the concepts for product or service description:

Manufacturing details:
________________________________________________________________________________

Development cycle:
________________________________________________________________________________

Development goals:
________________________________________________________________________________

2.2.Speaking practice: oral presentation to describe a product or service

Prepare an oral presentation about a product or service description your company may offer to its
customers. Consider:
- What makes the product unique, exclusive, its functions, solutions, benefits? -
Tell why this product is a great solution for your customers’ needs.
- Share your presentation in class.

2.3.Reading practice: Read the text and then, complete the exercises below.
Ten tips on how to sell any product or service2
Opinion December 16, 2013 Business Matters

2
Taken from https://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/opinion/ten-tips-sell-product-service/ Used by SENA for
academic purposes, exclusively.

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English Learning Guide

Competency 2
Unit 1: Customer Service
Workshop 3
Centro de Servicios Financieros- CSF
Sales are the lifeblood of every business. You can call it business development, account handling
or client relationship management. There’s a fine line between success and failure. Follow these
ten tips and improve your chances of closing any sale.
1. Research the customer. Find out all you can about their personal circumstances, for example
their relationship status, family names and hobbies. Make sure you understand their position in
their organisational hierarchy and how their business works. Keep notes on their company: read
their website, their annual report and their trade magazines.
2. Research your products. You need to know the specifics of availability, delivery dates, repairs
and your aftercare service. You also need to know about competitor offerings, so you can set your
product or service in context.
3. Research the past relationship. You should know the complete history of the relationship
between your company and the customer’s organisation. That includes what they have ordered in
the past. Know your facts about any challenges or issues you have had and how they were
resolved.
4. Set a clear – but flexible – objective. Your objective is not just to create a rapport with the
customer, it is to sell. But you’ll need fall-back objectives too, so prepare some alternatives. For
example, settle for a smaller order or even leave a product on sale or return. Your objectives must
be realistic. For high value items or services, your objective might be to persuade the customer to
undertake a cost-benefit study on your solution.
5. Probe for other customers for your product. When you’ve exhausted a product’s possibilities
with one customer, ask them for leads to other people in their organisation who might have a
need for that product.
6. Probe for other products for your customer. If a customer starts to buy fewer products from
you, always check to ensure you understand the reason why. It may be that their policies have
changed. Find out what is different. It might be possible for you to sell one or more of your
company’s other products, to help them meet their new requirements.
7. When you’re with your customer, ask open questions that get beneath the surface. One of the
worst things you can do in selling is to simply launch into your ‘patter’ without tailoring your
offering to the customer’s needs. We all know that people don’t buy features, they buy benefits,
but sometimes we can forget to look at what we’re selling through the customer’s eyes. Open up a
dialogue with the customer, make sure you understand their needs, then relate your product to
those needs and sell the benefits.
8. Keep control of the meeting. Be careful with a customer who tries to put you on the back foot
by asking lots of questions. Remember, you can answer a question with a question (why is that
important to you?). Try to uncover what is behind their queries and get to the root of their
needs.
9. Overcome their objections. There are few certainties in sales but one thing you can bet on is
that customers will have objections. The best advice here is that you should never take objections
personally. The customer is not objecting to you; they’re usually objecting either to their need or
to some aspect of your product. Once you understand that, it’s easier to put their objection into
context. The trick is to probe until you understand their specific objection (and often it will really
come down to just the one thing).

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English Learning Guide

Competency 2
Unit 1: Customer Service
Workshop 3
Centro de Servicios Financieros- CSF
10. Ask for the business. Closing the sale should be pain-free and simple. If you haven’t unearthed
all of the client’s unspoken objections, if the benefits aren’t necessarily relevant to the client, then
the close will need to overcome this – you may still make the sale, but you’ll be doing it the hard
way and with more uncertainty. Finally, once you’ve got the sale, stop talking. Less experienced
salespeople can sometimes talk the customer into changing their minds after they’ve agreed to
buy. Never make that mistake.
These tips may seem obvious but, in the real world, even experienced salespeople can forget to
apply them. Keep these fundamental points in mind and improve your chances of success.
Martin Addison is CEO of Video Arts, the learning content specialist. He can be contacted on 020
7400 4800 or via [email protected] These tips are taken from Successful Selling, a new
video-based training resource from Video Arts which brings alive the essential techniques and
principles of effective sales through realistic and humorous scenarios. For a preview visit:
http://www.videoarts.com/sales-and-negotiation/successful-selling

- Look for the definition and examples of the underlined Words in the text. - Based on the
principle 7, write down at least 3 questions to identify your customer’s needs to offer your
products or services.

2.4.Writing practice: make a brochure of your model company services

- Work in groups and take your model company to design a brochure describing its services
and products. Take into account: Description of the product/service, benefits, aftercare
service, availability, etc.
- Share it with the rest of the class and discuss as if you were a customer.

3. Extension activities: use some complementary materials to deepen your knowledge and
get more tools to improve your performance.

- To watch more videos and learn more vocabulary about the workplace communication, visit
the channel 925English at YouTube.
- Read more tips about products and services at https://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/opinion/ten tips-
sell-product-service/
- Get more information about call center tips at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKkDBKaP-hs
- Based on your instructor’s orientation, explore the following website and practice the English
structures. Do at least 2 activities from each topic studied in class and deliver them to your
instructor http://www.esl-lounge.com/student/grammar-guides/grammar-pre
intermediate.php

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