The Language of Small Business Texts and Vocabulary Training (for students of Economics) Part 1. Учебное пособие

Selling

Training

Unless you yourself as the business owner are a sales specialist, it would be unusual for a small business to take on someone who needs basic training in selling skills. If you do employ a trainee, you need to be prepared to wait for a long period before the person is achieving a good level of sales.

However, even if you employ experienced salespeople only, you may find it difficult to employ someone who knows your particular market and product in great detail. You must be prepared to provide good product training, plus detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of competitive products. If you fail to do this, your sales are likely to be disappointing.

Back-up Organization

There need to be a number of systems and records in place to enable the sales effort to work effectively:

1.Sales staff spend a lot of time out of the office. This is incompatible with the need for existing and potential customers, as well as new leads, to be in contact. There needs to be a wellorganized way of recording phone calls, for example, name, position and company of caller; date and time call received; brief message about purpose of call and what response was promised at your end. It goes without saying that any good sales rep will keep in touch with your office to ask what calls have been received and to follow those up.

2.Every sales rep needs a comprehensive and up-to-date price list, plus copies of any literature, press releases and publicity material.

3.If yours is the sort of business which has to issue quotes to customers, try to standardize these as much as possible. This cuts down the amount of time the rep has to spend on paperwork. This also applies to any other sales job which can be standardized. Word processors and micro computers will help. Sales letters, follow-ups to those not currently buying, and terms and conditions of the sale can be standardized. Terms and conditions can be printed on the back of the order form.

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Control

You need to exercise effective control over your sales staff. This can be difficult if they spend most of the time out of the office. You must insist on a weekly sales meeting with prepared information, such as number of phone calls or sales visits made, demonstrations carried out, quotes issued and orders received. The sales rep should be able to give you an estimate of the probability of receiving an order from each potential customer and when it is likely to be received.

The information provided by sales people is crucial in helping you to plan your business. You may be able to produce “Conversion ratios” to help you predict your likely level of sales. This would be something like:

•a percentage of initial phone calls which become a sales visit;

•a percentage of sales visits which move to the quote stage;

•a percentage of quotes which turn into orders.

Agent

Agents are not employees. They are in business on their own. They are likely to be agents for several products, but you should insist that they are not agents for any competing products. They work for commission on each sale, often between 7.5 and 15 per cent. The agent does not buy the product from you; instead, you invoice the customer direct.

The advantage of an agent is that you do not have to fund the overheads: no salary, car, office space and so on. The disadvantage is that you may find it difficult to control the agent's activities and the effort put in to sell your product. If you have a continuing responsibility for your product or service, you need to be particularly careful that the agent does not sell to unsuitable customers.

To mitigate the disadvantages, you need a written agreement which you should enforce carefully. The agreement should include the details on territory, products the agent will sell, the type of customer the agent can sell to, the rate of commission and the duration of the agreement.

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Distributor

Wholesalers and distributors are not the same as agents. They are your customers. They buy direct from you. When they sell on to their customers, they expect to be able to put on a markup of at least 30 per cent, if not more. If you choose this route for your business it cuts out most of the costs of direct selling, as you will probably deal with only a few distributors. However, you have no control over their selling effort.

Mail order

You can sell your product direct to the end-user, cutting out the middlemen, by selling through mail order. This can be done either by advertising a particular product in a magazine or newspaper and asking customers to buy the product direct or by producing a catalogue which consumers use to make their choice.

Selling by mail order can work well if you are selling to a specialist niche and can use the appropriate magazine for your advertisement. The product should also be relatively small and relatively high-priced, otherwise the cost of postage and packing makes the whole thing unattractive for the consumer. However, response can be unpredictable, with consequent problems for you in deciding the right level of stock.

Over-the-Counter

If your product is a specialist item, for example, a craft item, you can sell direct to shops, who in turn sell to consumers. To persuade the retailer to stock your product you need to be able to convince him or her that it will sell to that shop's customers.

On the other hand, if you are the retailer the sales process is quite different from some of the others discussed in this chapter. You cannot approach a potential customer in the same way as a salesperson selling direct. Instead, you have to tempt them into the shop before the sales process can begin.

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Consortium or Joint Venture

You could form a marketing cooperative with other businesses in your industry.

Personal Selling Skills

Many people regard salespeople as liars, cheats and commercial vultures. Some salespeople may be like this; while others can be more successful by being honest and responsible, but by paying attention to every small detail and developing their own selling style to match the product, as well as their own character.

What you need to do to improve your selling skills is develop a sales strategy, which can be simple but which should be applied to every sale. One approach is to produce a series of lists. These should include:

•main features of your product;

•major benefits it offers;

•most likely objections and your planned response;

•advantages and weaknesses of competitive products;

•the key characteristics of your potential customer;

•in what ways your product meets the customer's needs or wants.

There are also simple rules you can follow which will vastly improve your selling ability:

•know your product;

•listen to your buyer;

•relate what you are selling to your customer's needs and wants;

•plan your sales strategy for each prospective customer, so that you know what you want to achieve at each stage of the negotiation;

•have clear and well-worked out sales presentations, demonstrations or even telephone calls;

•make sure at all times that you know who the decisionmaker is in your prospective client's business.

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Developing your Own Sales Approach

The first time you try out your selling approach should not be in a potential customer's office. It is important to feel confident in your dialogue and handling of the client. This means practice. Ask a relative or a colleague to take part in a role-playing session. The best practice for you will be obtained if the customer is played by your relative or colleague as hostile, vindictive and uncooperative. Try to carry out role-playing sessions many times before you come face-to-face with a genuine customer so that you can develop confidence in your style.

The Stages of a Sale

There are three stages to making the sale:

•opening stage (often a telephone call making an appointment to visit);

•building the sale (including sales presentations, demonstrations and dealing with objections);

•closing the sale (recognizing buying signals and asking for the order).

Opening Stage

Your objective at this stage will usually be to make an appointment to visit a prospective buyer of your product and commence the negotiation. Obviously, you do not want to spend the time doing this unless you have already qualified this potential customer and satisfied yourself that there is a chance of selling your product.

The most efficient way of arranging appointments is to do so by telephone. The first hurdle may be to get past the buyer's secretary. Do not allow your name and phone number to be taken with a promise of ringing back. Instead, ask when your prospect will be free to take a telephone call.

The purpose of the phone call is to make the appointment, not sell you product at this stage. Try to keep it fairly brief and plan ahead what you are going to say. It may run along these lines:

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1.an opening statement;

2.any qualifying questions you would like to put (such as “Are you likely to buy this product in the next three months if it meets your requirements?” or “What is you budget?”);

3.why your prospective customer should arrange a meeting to see you and your product;

4.be prepared with a list of answers to the possible objections your prospect might throw out;

5.offer alternative times for the appointment;

6.finish the phone call.

Jot down the important parts of the conversation while you are speaking on the phone or straight afterwards.

Building the Sale

You must plan in advance any sales call, presentation or demonstration. Carefully analyse your potential customer's needs and requirements and decide the relevance of your product or service to these.

The opening phase is important. First impressions are important to make sure that your appearance fits in with your customer's, as well as being neat and clean. Do not waste too long on social trivialities but establish why you are there and awaken your listener's interest in your product. Before making your detailed sales pitch, ask about the customer's needs, so you can sell to these.

Important points you want to communicate to your listener are:

•the good reputation of your business, product and yourself;

•the benefit your potential buyer will gain if your product or service is purchased.

This suggests that you are talking while your possible

buyer is listening. But this is unlikely to achieve your sale. Salespeople have a tendency to talk too much. Instead, you should spend over half the sales calls listening to your prospective customer. If you do not do this, you cannot qualify how

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high is the chance of making the sale and you cannot relate your product to the customer's needs. You must be able to see yourself, your product and your company through your prospective customer's eyes. This involves listening.

It also implies that your prospective customer will talk. Some try not to, which can be disconcerting. Prepare a number of open questions which you can put during the sales call. An open question is one which cannot be answered by 'yes' or 'no'.

References to other customers who are already dealing with you can be very powerful, as long as your buyer sees the reference as relevant. So the reference must be a comparable business and use.

At some stage, the subject of your competitors may be raised by your buyer. The traditional stand-by advice is 'Don't knock the competition!' On the whole, the advice is sound; criticizing the competition may have an adverse effect on your listener, because it tends to make you sound rather weak. However, do emphasize any benefits which you know your competitors do not have, as long as they are important to your buyer.

Demonstrations can be an effective selling device. You must take great care in preparing the demo. Make sure everything works before you leave your office for the appointment. Handle the equipment carefully during the demo and if it is possible involve the buyer in using and handling it during the demo.

With some products or services, quite a lot of investigation needs to be done by you before you can suggest a solution and give a quote. If yours is this sort of complicated sale, before you make a proposal you should carry out the following steps:

•make sure you are investigating the right problem;

•ensure you have assembled all the facts you need by speaking to everyone involved;

•keep an open mind about the solution you will propose;

•keep in touch with the decision-maker and talk through your proposed solution before committing yourself to paper.

The sales proposal should simply be a restatement of what has already been said.

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Little has been said so far of your potential client's reactions. If there is to be any chance of making a sale, at some stage objections will be raised. Do not view these negatively as a nuisance. An objection displays that your listener is interested in the negotiation process. An objection should be treated as a request for more information. It would be a mistake to respond to sales resistance by becoming too persistent or pressurizing too much.

There are some general guidelines to follow:

•do not contradict or argue and remain calm at all times;

•do not allow the objection to become too important by spending too long replying to it or making several attempts to reply;

•if possible, anticipate the objections and prepare a response;

•the best way of dealing with an objection appears to be either to turn the objection into a sales benefit or to agree with the prospect, but counter with a benefit.

Closing the Sale

It is important to ask for the order at the right psychological moment. This could be after overcoming an objection or if your potential buyer is showing buying signals. These might include asking about extras available.

If your prospective customer is hesitating, extra pressure is unlikely to be effective. Instead try to create a relaxed atmosphere to have a discussion and assume the decision will go your way. Talk about what will happen in the future and assume that there will be a continuing relationship between the two businesses.

Once you have got the order verbally, do not relax – you can still lose it. Do not count it as an order until you have received written confirmation; in particular, do not order materials until you have the order in writing. If it is a new customer, it is prudent financially to take up references or find out credit ratings before you accept the order. The last thing you want is to do all the work and find that you will not be paid.

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