Sales Management

By
Tauseef Iqbal Khan
Recommended Reading
• Sales Force Management- Leadership, Innovation, Technology -
Twelfth Edition By Mark W. Johnston & Greg W. Marshall
• Harvard Articles
• Cases and Scenarios
Behind Every Sale There is a Smile

• I never lose. I either win or learn. – Nelson Mandela

• I can’ is 100 times more important than IQ
• Establishing trust is better than any sales technique
Chapter #2 The Process of Selling and
Buying
Learning Objectives
• Recognize the key drivers of change in selling and sales management
• Understand the best practices in selling that lead to exceeding
customer expectations
• Identify and explain key success factors for salesperson performance
• Describe the relationship between buying centers and selling centers
and the nature of team selling
Drivers of Change in Selling & Sales
Management
• Sales organizations are being reinvented to better address the needs
of the changing marketplace. Six critical drivers of change are
• Building long-term relationships with customers
• Creating sales organizational structures that are more nimble and
adaptable to the needs of different customer groups
• Gaining greater job ownership and commitment from salespeople
• Shifting sales management style from commanding to coaching
• Leveraging available technology for sales success
• Better integrating salesperson performance evaluation
Sales Target
Career Path
Key Success Factors in Selling
• Listening Skills
• Follow-up Skills
• Ability to Adapt Sales Style from Situation to Situation
• Tenacity—Sticking with a Task
• Well Organized
• Verbal Communication Skills
• Proficiency in Interacting with People at All Levels of a Customer’s Organization
• Demonstrated Ability to Overcome Objections
• Closing Skills
• Personal Planning and Time Management Skills
Selling in Business-to-Consumer versus
Business-to-Business Markets
• Most salespeople are employed in various kinds of retail selling which
includes selling goods and services to end-user consumers for their
own personal use- business-to-consumer (B2C) market
• A much greater amount of relationship selling is accounted for by the
business-to-business (B2B) market, which used to be called industrial
selling—the sale of goods and services to non-end-user consumers
Types of B2B Customers
• Sales to resellers
• Sales to business users
• Sales to institutions
Classifying Types of B2B Sales Jobs
• Trade servicer. The sales force’s primary responsibility is to increase
business from current and potential customers by providing them
with merchandising and promotional assistance
• The “trade” referred to in the label is the group of resellers such as
retailers or distributors with whom this sales force does business
• A P&G salesperson selling soap and laundry products to chain-store
personnel is an example of trade selling
Classifying Types of B2B Sales Jobs
• Missionary seller. The sales force’s primary job is to increase business
from current and potential customers by providing them with product
information and other personal selling assistance
• Missionary salespeople often do not take orders from customers
directly but persuade customers to buy their firm’s product from
distributors or other wholesale suppliers
• Like detailers / medical rep’s in pharmaceutical business
Classifying Types of B2B Sales Jobs
• Technical seller. The sales force’s primary responsibility is to increase
business from current customers and potential customers by
providing them with technical and engineering information and
assistance.
• New business seller. The sales force’s primary responsibility is to
identify and obtain business from new customers
Stages in The Selling Process
Prospecting for Customers
• Prospecting for new customers is critical
• It can also be one of the most disheartening aspects of selling, especially for
beginning salespeople
• In some consumer goods businesses, prospecting for new customers simply
involves cold canvassing
• Salespeople use a variety of information sources to identify relevant prospects
• Telemarketing is used by many firms to find prospects including both outbound
and inbound (Toll free)
• The Internet is also proving a useful technology for generating leads to
potential new customers
Prospecting for Customers
• A firm’s account management policies should address how much
emphasis salespeople should give to prospecting for new customers
versus prospecting and servicing existing accounts
• If the firm’s strategy is transactional, if the product is in the
introductory stage of its life cycle, if it is an infrequently purchased
durable good, or if the typical customer does not require much
service after the sale, sales reps should devote substantial time to
prospecting for new customers
• For repeat buying customers / services required / FMCG goods then
salespersons must devote maximum time to existing accounts
Stages in The Selling Process
• Opening the Relationship- The task here is to determine who is
authoritative of buying – in most of the cases is the Buying center
• Qualifying the Prospect
• Presenting the Sales Message
• Closing the Sale
• Servicing the Account- Post sale approach to keep excellent
relationship
The Buying Center- Participants
• Initiators are the people who perceive a problem or opportunity that
may require the purchase of a new product or service and thereby
start the buying process
• Users, the people in the organization who must use or work with the
product or service, often influence the purchase decision
• Influencers provide information for evaluating alternative products
and suppliers, and often play a major role in determining the
specifications and criteria to use in making the purchase decision
• Gatekeepers control the flow of information to other people involved
in the purchasing process.
The Buying Center- Participants
• The buyer is the person who actually contacts the selling organization
and places the order. In most organizations, buyers have the authority
to negotiate purchases
• The decider is the person with the final authority to make a purchase
decision. Sometimes buyers have this authority
• The controller is the person who determines the budget for the
purchase
The Buying Situations
• New-task Purchases, where a customer is buying a relatively complex
and expensive product or service for the first time
• Modified Rebuy purchase decisions, where a customer is interested
in modifying the product specifications, prices, or other terms
• Straight Rebuy, where a customer is reordering an item it has
purchased many times