MUHAMMAD IZUWAN FATANNA BIN MOKHTAR 2020350919 / BA2405B

SALES FORCE MANAGEMENT

MKT623

REVIEW EXERCISES (CHAPTER 2)

1. Describe the key driver of change in selling and sales management.

• Building long-term relationships with customers. This includes assessing
customer value and focusing on high-priority customers.

• Creating sales organizational structures that are nimbler and more adaptable
to the needs of different customer groups. To compete effectively today, firms
must be willing and able to customize the sales effort to meet different customers’
preferred ways of doing business. Flexibility is a key asset of modern sales
organizations.

• Gaining greater job ownership and commitment from salespeople. This can
be accomplished by removing functional barriers within the organization and by
leveraging the team experience.

• Shifting sales management style from commanding to coaching. Or, put

another way, today’s sales managers must create an environment that allows
salespeople to use their talents and abilities to successfully secure, build, and
maintain relationships with profitable customers. While item 3 implies that in the
past, organizational structure was a common stumbling block to salesperson
success, item 4 recognizes that sales managers themselves also are often guilty
of blocking successful relationship selling. For selling to change, management of
salespeople must also change accordingly.

• Leveraging available technology for sales success. Clearly, salespeople today

have more types of technological tools at their disposal than ever before. The sales
organizations that make the best use of technology will have a strong competitive
edge over others.

• Better integrating salesperson performance evaluation. A real weakness of

many sales organizations in the past was in how they evaluated and ultimately
rewarded their salespeople. The move from transactional selling to relationship
MUHAMMAD IZUWAN FATANNA BIN MOKHTAR 2020350919 / BA2405B

selling, coupled with the use of selling teams and a more coaching style of
management, necessitates rethinking the performance evaluation and reward
process for sales organizations.

2. What is the best practice in selling that lead to exceeding customer

expectations?

Selling ethically starts by understanding the importance of honesty. Being accurate and
forthright in each customer interaction is an opportunity to prove to your customers that
you’re a salesperson who is actively working to help them, rather than merely complete a
sale.

• Be thoroughly knowledgeable of your product or service.

According to SalesForce’s 2016 study, 70% of customers agree: knowledgeable sales

representatives are a major factor in how loyal they are to a company.

Commit the details of each of your company’s offerings to memory. By equipping

yourself with this information, you empower yourself to be a trusted source of product
knowledge to your customers and prevent any accidental miscommunications -- which
may result in your being mistakenly perceived as being a deceptive salesperson --
when engaging future prospects.

• Follow through consistently.

Consistent follow-through is one of the most overlooked, yet powerful, tools in a

salesperson’s kit. Whether following up after an initial conversation or after having
closed a sale successfully, staying engaged with your customers shows them that
you’re personally invested in their continued success.

• Give honest answers.

Your customers will regularly inquire as to how your product or service is different or
otherwise better suited than the competition to meet their needs. In these moments, it
can be tempting to tell a seemingly white lie in order to move closer toward completing
a sale
MUHAMMAD IZUWAN FATANNA BIN MOKHTAR 2020350919 / BA2405B

3. Discuss why sales job can be highly satisfying in marketing environment.

For most professional salespeople, it is precisely the complexity and challenge of their
jobs that motivate them to perform at a high level and provide a sense of satisfaction
with their choice of careers. A number of satisfaction surveys over the years have
found generally high levels of job satisfaction among professional salespeople across
a broad cross section of firms and industries. Although these surveys did find some
areas of dissatisfaction, that unhappiness tended to focus on the policies and actions
of the salesperson’s firm or sales manager, not on the nature of the sales job itself.
Why are so many professional salespeople generally quite satisfied with their jobs?
Some attractive aspects of selling careers include the following:

i. Autonomy, or the freedom of action and opportunities for personal initiative.

ii. Multifaceted and challenging activities as part of the job, sales activities that
will be addressed later in this chapter.
iii. Financial rewards—salespeople hired right out of college, for example, tend
to start at higher salaries than most other professions and also tend to keep up
well during their careers with the compensation of their peers outside of sales
(due to the nature of sales compensation being linked directly to performance).
iv. Favorable working conditions, often via telecommuting with a virtual office,
and with less minute-to-minute direct supervision than most other careers.
v. Excellent opportunities for career development and advancement.

4. Explain the key success factors for salesperson performance.

• Listening Skills
The top-rated item is listening skills. Others have found through their own research
that buyer–seller relationships are significantly strengthened when salespeople
consistently employ effective listening skills, especially using active listening.
Ironically, selling courses and sales training seminars almost always focus more
on teaching salespeople to speak and write, but not to listen. One of the great
things about practicing great listening skills with clients is that it fosters a
relationship of trust and respect, as noted in the Leadership box on p.

• Ability To Adapt Sales Style To Situation

The practice of adaptive selling is the altering of sales behaviors during a customer
interaction or across customer interactions based on perceived information about
the nature of the selling situation.7 This is analogous to the idea discussed earlier
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of being a nimble firm. Being adaptive allows the salesperson to better practice
relationship selling by understanding customer needs and problems and by
providing solutions.

• Well Organized
As the content and responsibilities of sales jobs have increased in complexity and
buying organizations have become more complicated to navigate, the ability of a
salesperson to skillfully prioritize and arrange the work has increased as a key
success factor. Being well organized is a component of effective time and territory
management.

• Verbal Communication Skills

It is of value to note a second time that this factor, while obviously critical to sales
success, is rated lower in importance by sales managers than listening skills.
Salespeople must be great communicators.

• Ability To Overcome Objections

A customer may have a number of concerns about any given purchase that the
salesperson must work to overcome to the satisfaction of the customer. Objections
are a natural and expected part of any sales process. By developing a trusting
relationship over the long run with the client, and by working to negotiate win–win
solutions, objections can be minimized.
• Closing Skills
Obviously, in order for a salesperson to be successful, he or she has to generate
business from clients.

• Personal Planning And Time Management Skills

As with being well organized, being good at personal planning and managing your
time will serve you well in a sales career. Nowadays, both these success factors
have been augmented substantially through technology—especially smartphones
and tablets.
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5. Discuss different types of selling jobs

Two broad categories of selling are selling in business-to-consumer markets and selling
in business-to-business markets.

a) Selling in Business-to-Consumer versus Business-to-Business Markets

In terms of sheer numbers, most salespeople are employed in various kinds of
retail selling. These jobs involve selling goods and services to end-user consumers
for their own personal use. Thus salespeople here are referred to as selling in the
business-to-consumer (B2C) market. Examples are direct sellers (Avon, Mary Kay,
etc.), residential real estate brokers, and retail store salespeople. However, 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.

b) B2B Sales Jobs

i. 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.
ii. 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.
iii. 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. A sales
engineer from the General Electric jet engine company calling on Boeing is
engaged in technical selling. The trend nowadays is for most technical
selling to be accomplished through cross-functional selling teams. This is
because the complexity of many of the products and associated services
involved in technical selling make it difficult for anyone salesperson to
master all aspects of this sale.
MUHAMMAD IZUWAN FATANNA BIN MOKHTAR 2020350919 / BA2405B

iv. New business seller. The sales force’s primary responsibility is to identify
and obtain business from new customers. In relationship selling, this is
analogous to a focus on securing and building the customer relationship.

6. List and explain the role of various participant in an organizational buying

center.
• Initiators – perceive problems/opportunities requiring new product or service
• Users – use or work with product or service
• Influencers – provide information for evaluating products or suppliers
• Gatekeepers – control flow of information
• Deciders – final authority to purchase
• Controllers – determine budget

7. Describe the relationship between buying centers and the nature of team selling.
• Bring together individuals to help salespeople to be more effective
• Establish team selling structure to meet customer need
• Matrix Organization – direct reports and internal consultants provide expertise
• Key Account – team managed by senior salesperson dedicated to serving
important customer.

8. List the stages in organizational buyer decision making.

• Stage 1 – Anticipation or recognition of a problem or need
• Stage 2 – Determination and description of the traits and quality of the needed
item(s).
• Stage 3 – Search for and qualification of the potential suppliers
• Stage 4 – Acquisition and analysis of proposals or bids
• Stage 5 – Evaluation of proposals and selection of suppliers
• Stage 6 – Selection of an order routine
• Stage 7 – Performance evaluation and feedback