Question

#1

(1) Determine the underlying cause of the resulting "customer experience" (e.g., great salesperson, poor organization, bad training, or bad attitude). (2) Identify "sales techniques, strategies and tactics" used (or those which should have been used) and recount examples in the write-up. (3) Make specific recommendations how the salesperson could have made his/her sales presentation better for the benefit of the customer (e.g., you), and how the firm-company-organization can improve its "sales training" to enhance or improve the customer experience. (4) Finally, suggest a plan for improvement (if poor experience) or an employee incentive program (if satisfying) acting as a team leader in the sales or management role. Be specific and focus on the most critical aspects of the encounter. Criteria for grading includes how effectively you incorporate concepts from the course (progressive basis) into your observations, along with your ability to diagnose cause-effect and recommend appropriate solutions.

Answer 1

The reasons for a bad sales interaction can be numerous, the prime ones being poor incentives and pay package of the salsperson, lack of motivation in the salesforce due to the management not recognising their efforts, bad company culture where nobody is willing to take the accountability, discriminatory and biased behaviour in favour of some, bad sales training and lack of systems for tracking the customer experience and subsequent corrective action.

The effective sales techniques include understanding the customers' needs, listening to the issues which are critical to him /her, mapping those needs with the available product line and come up with the right product, being ethical, transparent and helpful to the customer in choosing the right item, post purchase interaction and ability to resolve the conflicts amicably.

Before making the sales presentation, the salesperson should know the product / service inside out. He /she should be aware of the cutomer needs and with the common issues relating to the product. He should also know the competitors' product, and should be able to defend the product's salient features against those of competitors in ethical, transparent and honest manner to win the customers' confidence. The company should provide the training keeping in mind all factors above.

The plan for improvement should address following items.

(a) Identification of the most essential sales traits needed for successful sales interaction, keeping in mind, the nature of customers, their needs and market demand, and help the person to develop those competencies.

(b) Track the customer interaction performance through feedback and identify the training needs in every individual case and take corrective action.

(c) Do the post training evaluation.

(d) Link the performance with compensation, and reward high performers.

(e) Develop benchmarks through best in class practices and strive for continuous improvement of performance.