On average, today’s workers must sell an idea, or persuade a client, boss or colleague at least once in their lifetime. As such, for a long-lasting career in today’s business world, one must acquire extensive knowledge of sales skills and selling techniques. The ability to convince others to use one’s ideas, applications, products, and services, plays an essential role in making a positive impact at work. Additionally, in a client-facing environment, one must understand the nuances involved in convincing clients to make a purchase. Therefore, employers teach various sales philosophies when onboarding new employees into a company. The different sales approaches range from high-pressure to consultative and everything in between. Sales aficionados …show more content…
Even the most skilled salesperson often misses this stage in the Sales Through Service process. Tenured salespeople can immediately identify a client’s needs and regularly attempt to bypass this step and jump right to solving them. Many consider skipping the questioning phase a rookie mistake that can cost sales and clients, as well as hinder overall revenue for a company. In this step, the salesperson takes the time to ask open-ended strategic questions to learn more about the client and their individual needs. When a salesperson asks the right questions, he/she uncovers the cause of an issue, and offers a better solution for the client – one that addresses their problems, and one to which they cannot say no. For example, travel agents spend a great deal of time getting to know their clients before they make vacation recommendations. They might ask questions like: how many children do you have and how old are they, can you describe your dream vacation in five words or less, and how do you feel about tropical locations. The more open-ended the question, the better the answer received from the client. Once the salesperson uncovers a need, he/she can stop asking questions and begin formulating a client-specific …show more content…
When used correctly, the steps in Sales Through Service help salespeople close more deals more often and generate additional revenue for their companies. For maximum effectiveness, a salesperson must use the four steps of the Sales Through Service process in order: build a rapport, ask open-ended questions, give a recommendation and close the sale. By doing so, the salesperson lays the groundwork for a positive relationship with the client and sets the stage for the client to make a purchasing decision. Using Sales Through Service does not guarantee that a salesperson will make a deal every time, but it does increase the likelihood of a client purchasing from the company – a step in the right
Within “Thank You for Arguing What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach us About the Art of Persuasion,” Jay Heinrichs, a skilled editor, and author with a long history of rhetoric delineates a very educational lesson over the power of persuasive writing or speaking in order to interact with the world around us. He accomplishes this by lucidly describing the steps to become a powerful persuader. My favorite chapter is chapter 7, which proves, to me, that this book should continue to be used in schools. Heinrichs organizes the book by explaining the skill then recounting an anecdote to help further explain when and how the strategy is most useful.
subjects, it allows them to think about what is currently going on in their business and links this to their business goals. When you take a step back and give the client power, you gain lots of insight and knowledge about the organization. As Fred W. Nickols (2006) states, “Exploit your status as a newcomer or an outsider. And remember this: An ounce of curiosity is worth a pound of expertise” (p. 8). Shifting power to your client may be just the thing needed in order to gain the proper credibility and trust that is essential for a successful collaborative consultant and client relationship.
In “Thank You For Arguing”, Jay Heinrichs teaches the reader how simple it can be to get things your own way through persuasion. Throughout the book, the author uses methods that can help move an audience from Cicero’s three-step strategy to examples with present issues. Heinrichs has been in the media business for over 30 years working as a writer, editor, executive, and consultant. With 3 books published, “Thank You For Arguing” has been used in over 3,000 college courses and has become a New York Times bestseller. In the world of persuasion we can learn from it, realize how useful just one chapter can be, and discover if a book should be continued in educational courses.
Knowing were clients are coming from and being able to identify with stories
111). The main reason why this is one of my favorite aspects of this book is that it encourages “reasonable down-selling” (Spoelestra, 1997, p. 112). I think that too often salespeople try to only upsell customers, and that can end in a bad experience for the customer, or not sale for the organization at all. I believe that if all salespeople abide by this rule, then organizations will be more successful, as customers will actually be purchasing something they actually want and will enjoy, which increases the chance that they will be a repeat
Another goal, is that their contact agents be able to provide quick information for customers by developing more resources to help contact agents to be able to provide said information. Next, is that the agent’s performance can be tracked and analyzed by managers. Lastly, to increase contact channels for
In his seminal work, Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller portrays wretched conditions inflicting the lives of lower class people amid class-struggle in 1940s America. Miller sets the story during the great financial depression in the US , in between times after World War I and around World War II, though his characters hardly speak about the trauma of two World Wars. Miller earns an enormous success by putting an ordinary salesman as the protagonist in his play instead of putting a man of social nobility. In the play, Miller depicts his central character, Willy Loman as a destitute salesman struggling to rise up the social ladder in a capitalist society, who remains deluded by a 'dream of success ' and takes on a relentless pursuit of happiness that eventually brings his tragic demise. Though some critics speak in favor of the popular account of the cause of his death being his excessive obsession with so called the American dream and the 'capitalist oppression ' ; however, many still refuse to ascribe the cause of his death to capitalist oppression, which I will use synonymously with American dream here.
Being an active listener allows the salesperson to know their customer’s point of view, and attend to the needs and wants of their customer. The third part of the book consists of twelve principles to win people to your way of thinking. A principle in particular that I intend to apply more often in life and in the workplace is being sympathetic with other person’s ideas and desires. Too often I ignore or disregard others opinions or ideas, when I should encourage them and see things from their point of view. According to Carnegie, to be successful in life and in my career, I need to show more respect for others
The last kind of people that help start epidemics are salesmen. Gladwell describes these people as having a characteristic that many people don’t have: persuasion. For them, convincing people to do something or buy something is like a second nature. Gladwell says, “Persuasion often works in ways that we do not appreciate. It’s not that smiles and nods are subliminal messages.
Discussion: Sales are the most dominating factor for any organization. In any circumstances, sales will always
Porsche 1. Analysis of the buyer decision process of a traditional Porsche customer. There are five stages in buying decision process which are shown through following diagram: Porsche is a reputed company and it is well known to customers. In case of difficult situation of purchase, customer can follow all the five stages such as purchasing of durable goods of new brand.
Introduction: Wendy Peterson, Vice - President of sales for Account/back’s Plano, Texas Office had concerns with one of her employees, Fred Wu. Fred Wu has landed one client within the Chinese market, the single largest client of the downtown office. However, there were disagreements between Peterson and Wu on several aspects. Moreover, Fed Wu requested for a personal assistant, which Peterson thought to be unreasonable. This is because only a small number of AccountBack’s most successful sales executive with numerous accounts had assistants of their own.
Salespeople create value for their firms’ customers by advocating and communicating the customers’ needs, desires, concerns, and preferences back to the company and find solutions (Tanner and Raymond, 2010). Also, since the salespeople are experts in regards to their products, they can best advise the customer as to which product is the best fit for them or adapt offerings to fit. In this way, salespeople create value that would not have
The Core Competencies of Effective Business Consulting Services The art of business consultation is a more nuanced and subjective process than some may realize at first glance. There are plenty of standard practices that industry veterans continue to use, but most consulting firms view and define them differently. Each consultation job is a different case, and there’s no single process that works for every client. There are, however, more enlightened ways to view the fundamentals of effective business consulting practices. Common Views of Business Consultation
Every business industry nowadays, whether they are aware of it or not, depends on business strategies that they implement in order to achieve high growth potential. Some businesses, however, tend to forget the importance of maintaining effective sales strategies, therefore, they experience a decrease in sales causing their business to eventually experience some financial difficulties. Gluck (n.d.) describes sales strategy as a plan that allows companies to position their brand or product in order to gain a competitive advantage. Successful sales strategy should create a need by convincing a potential customer that the good is presented to them can solve their problems. This has to be created as a “planned approach to account-management policy