If a Salesperson Sells to Customers and Does Not Contact Them Again

thirteen.one The Role Professional Salespeople Play

Learning Objectives

1. Recognize the office professional selling plays in society and in firms' marketing strategies.
2. Identify the different types of sales positions.

You've created a great production, you've priced it right, and you've prepare a wonderful marketing communication strategy in motility. Now y'all can just sit back and watch the sales roll in, right? Probably non. Unless your company is able to sell the product entirely over the Cyberspace, you probably have a lot more work to do. For example, if you desire consumers to be able to buy the product in a retail store, someone will first take to convince the retailer to carry the production.

"Nothing happens until someone sells something," is an quondam saying in business organisation. Only in reality, a lot must happen earlier a sale can be fabricated. Companies count on their sales and marketing teams non only to sell products but to the lay the background to make it happen. However, salespeople are expensive. Ofttimes they are the nigh expensive element in a visitor's marketing strategy. As a result, they have to generate concern in social club to justify a firm's investment in them.

What Salespeople Do

Salespeople deed on behalf of their companies by doing the post-obit:

• Creating value for their firms' customers
• Managing relationships
• Relaying customer and market information back to their organizations

In add-on to acting on behalf of their firms, sales representatives likewise act on behalf of their customers. Whenever a salesperson goes back to her company with a customer's request, be it for quicker delivery, a change in a product feature, or a negotiated toll, she is voicing the customer'southward needs. Her goal is to help the buyer purchase what serves his or her needs the best. Similar Ted Schulte, the salesperson is the practiced just, in this case, an practiced representing the customer'due south needs back to the company.

From society'southward perspective, selling is wonderful when professional salespeople deed on behalf of both buyers and sellers. The salesperson has a fiduciary responsibility (in this case meaning something needs to be sold) to the company and an upstanding responsibility to the buyer. At times, however, the two responsibilities disharmonize with i another. For example, what should a salesperson exercise if the product meets only most of a buyer's needs, while a competitor's product is a perfect fit?

Salespeople also face conflicts within their companies. When a salesperson tells a customer a product will be delivered in iii days, she has made a promise that will either be kept or broken by her company's shipping department. When the salesperson accepts a contract with certain terms, she has made a promise to the customer that will either be kept or broken by her company's credit department. What if the credit department and shipping department can't agree on the aircraft terms the client should receive? Which grouping should the salesperson side with? What if managers want the salesperson to sell a product that's unreliable and will swamp the company'southward customer service representatives with buyers' complaints? Should she nonetheless piece of work hard to sell the offering?

Situations such every bit these create role conflict. Office conflict occurs when the expectations people prepare for yous differ from one another. Now couple the state of affairs we merely mentioned with the fact that the salesperson has a personal involvement in whether the auction is made or not. Perhaps her income or job depends on it. Can y'all empathise how function conflict might outcome in a person using questionable tactics to sell a product?

So are salespeople dishonest? Many people think so in part because certain types of salespeople accept earned poor reputations that have tarnished the entire profession. Every bit a issue, some business concern students avert sales despite the very high earnings potential and personal growth opportunities. You might exist surprised to learn, however, that one written report found that salespeople are less likely to exaggerate in club to become what they want than politicians, preachers, and professors. Another study looked at how business students responded to ethical dilemmas versus how professional salespeople responded. What did the report find? That salespeople were more than likely to respond ethically than students were.

In full general, salespeople handle these conflicting expectations well. Society benefits because salespeople help buyers make more informed decisions and assist their companies succeed, which, in turn, creates jobs for people and products they tin use. Most salespeople besides truly believe in the effectiveness of their visitor's offerings. Schulte, for case, is convinced that the pacemakers he sells are the all-time there are. When this belief is coupled with a genuine business concern for the welfare of the customer—a business that most salespeople share—order tin't lose.

Most marketing majors begin their career in sales. While a growing number of universities are offering a major in sales, the demand for professional salespeople often outstrips supply, creating opportunities for marketing majors. Sales is a great place to start a career not only because the earnings are at the top of whatever business organisation major but because sales is the only place to really acquire what is happening in the market.

Creating Value

Consider the following situations:

• At the start of the chapter, we described a real-life situation—a cardiac surgeon with a high-risk patient is wondering what to practice. The doctor calls Ted Schulte at Guidant to get his input on how to handle the situation. Schulte recommends the appropriate pacemaker and offers to drive one hundred miles early in the morning time in club to be able to answer any questions that might ascend during the surgery.
• A food wholesaler is working overtime to prepare invoices. Unfortunately, ane out of five has a error. The effect is that customers don't go their invoices in a timely fashion, and so they don't pay speedily and don't pay the correct amounts. Consequently, the company has to borrow money fulfill its payroll obligations. Jay King, a salesperson from DG Vault, recommends the wholesaler purchase an electronic invoicing system. The wholesaler does. Afterward, it takes the wholesaler just days to get invoices ready, instead of weeks. And instead of the invoices being only eighty percent authentic, they are close to being 100 percent accurate. The wholesaler no longer has trouble meeting its payroll because customers are paying more quickly.
• Sanderson Farms, a chicken processor, wants to build a new establish about Waco, Texas. The chambers of commerce for several towns in the surface area vie for the project. The chamber representative from Waco, though, locates an enterprise zone that reduces the company's taxes for a menstruum of time, and then works with a local banker to get the visitor ameliorate financing. In improver, the rep gets a local technical college involved so Sanderson volition accept enough trained employees. These factors create a unique package that sells the company on setting up shop in Waco.

All these are true stories of how salespeople create value by understanding the needs of their customers and so create solutions to meet those needs. Salespeople can accommodate the offer, such as in the Sanderson Farms case, or they can adapt how they present the offer and so that it is easier for the client to understand and make the right decision.

Adapting a message or product on the fly isn't something that can be hands accomplished with other types of marketing advice. Granted, some Web sites are designed to adapt the information and products they display based on what a client appears to be interested in while he or she is looking at the sites. But unless the site has a "chat with a representative" feature, there is no existent dialogue occurring. The power to engage in dialogue helps salespeople meliorate understand their customers and their needs and and so create valuable solutions for them.

Note besides that creating value ways making sales. Salespeople sell—that's the bulk of the value they deliver to their employers. There are other ways in which they deliver value, but it is how much they sell that determines most of the value they deliver to their companies.

Salespeople aren't advisable channels for companies in all situations, yet. Some purchases don't crave the salesperson's expertise. Or the demand to sell at a very low cost may make retail stores or online selling more attractive. Just in situations requiring accommodation, customer education, and other value-adding activities, salespeople can be the all-time channel to reach customers.

Managing Relationships

Because their time is limited, sales representatives take to decide which accounts they take the best shot at winning and which are the about lucrative. Once a salesperson has decided to pursue an business relationship, a strategy is devised and implemented, and if a sale happens, the salesperson is also responsible for ensuring that the offering is implemented properly and to the customer's satisfaction.

Nosotros've already emphasized the notion of "customers for life" in this book. Salespeople recognize that business is not about making friends, but about making and retaining customers. Although buyers tend to purchase products from salespeople they similar, beingness liked is not plenty. Salespeople have to ensure that they close the deal with the customer. They also have to recognize that the goal is not to merely shut ane deal, but as many deals equally possible in the future.

Gathering Data

Salespeople are boundary spanners, in that they operate outside the boundaries of the firm and in the field. As such, they are the first to learn about what competitors are doing. An of import role for them, and so, is to report back to headquarters near their competitors' new offerings and strategies.

Similarly, salespeople collaborate straight with customers and, in then doing, gather a great deal of useful information about their needs. The salespeople then laissez passer the information along to their firms, which use it to create new offerings, adjust their current offerings, and reformulate their marketing tactics. The trick is getting the data to the right decision makers in firms. Many companies apply client relationship direction (CRM) software like Netsuite or Salesforce.com to provide a machinery for salespeople to enter customer data and others to retrieve it. A company's marketing department, for case, can so use that data to pinpoint segments of customers with which to communicate directly. In addition to using the data to improve and create and marketing strategies, the data can also help marketing conclusion makers empathize who makes buying decisions, resulting in such decisions as targeting trade shows where potential buyers are likely to be. In other words, marketing managers don't take to ask salespeople direct what customers want; they tin pull that information from a customer database. (For an online demonstration of Aplicor, visit http://www.aplicor.com/product_tour.php.)

Figure 13.i

Aplicor is a computer software programme that enables salespeople to capture and rail data on their accounts. This information can then be used by marketing mangers to design better marketing strategies and offerings. The system as well helps salespeople manage their accounts amend, because they take access to more customer information.

Types of Sales Positions

In that location are different ways to categorize salespeople. They can be categorized by the customers they work with, such equally whether they are consumers, other businesses, or government institutions. Another way to categorize salespeople is by the size of their customers. Most professional sales positions involve selling to other businesses, but many also sell to consumers like you. For the purposes of this book, nosotros will categorize salespeople by their activities. Using activities as a basis, there are four bones types of salespeople: missionary salespeople, trade salespeople, prospectors, and account managers. In some discussions, you lot'll hear that at that place are iii types: social club getters, order takers, and sales back up. The four nosotros describe in the following are all types of order getters; that is, they actively seek to brand sales by calling on customers. We'll also discuss order takers and sales support after we discuss the four types of society getters.

Missionary Salespeople

A missionary salesperson calls on people who make decisions almost products but don't actually purchase them, and while they call on individuals, the relationship is business-to-business. For example, a pharmaceutical representative might phone call on a doctor to provide the doctor with clinical information about a medication's effectiveness. The salesperson hopes the doctor will prescribe the drug. Patients, not doctors, actually purchase the medication. Similarly, salespeople telephone call on your professors urging them to use certain textbooks. Simply you, the student, choose whether or not to actually buy the books.

There are salespeople who besides work with "market place influencers." Mary Gros works at Teradata, a company that develops data warehousing solutions. Gros calls on higher kinesthesia who accept the power to influence decision makers when information technology comes to the data warehouses they use, either past consulting for them, writing research papers virtually data warehousing products, or offering opinions to students on the software. In an endeavor to influence what they write about Teradata'south offerings, Gros also visits with analysts who write reviews of products.

Trade Salespeople

A trade salesperson is someone who calls on retailers and helps them brandish, annunciate, and sell products to consumers. Eddy Patterson is a trade salesperson. Patterson calls on major supermarket bondage like HEB for Stubb's Bar-B-Q, a company that makes barbecue sauces, rubs, marinades, and other barbecuing products. Patterson makes suggestions about how Stubb's products should be priced and where they should be placed in store and then they will sell faster. Patterson besides works with his clients' advertising departments in society to create constructive ads and fliers featuring Stubb'south products.

Prospectors

A prospector is a salesperson whose chief part is to observe prospects, or potential customers. The potential customers have a demand, but for any number of reasons, they are not actively looking for products to meet those needs—peradventure because they lack information about where to look for them or simply haven't had the time to do then. Prospectors frequently knock on a lot of doors and brand a lot of phone calls, which is called cold calling because they practise not know the potential accounts and are therefore talking to them "cold." Their primary task is to sell, but the activeness that drives their success is prospecting. Many salespeople who sell to consumers would be considered prospectors, including salespeople such every bit insurance or financial services salespeople, or cosmetic salespeople such as those working for Avon or Mary Kay.

In some B2B situations, the prospector finds a prospect then turns it over to another salesperson to close the deal. Or the prospector may take the prospect all the way through the sales process and close the sale. The primary responsibility is to brand sales, but the activity that drives the salesperson'due south success is prospecting.

Account Managers

Account managers are responsible for ongoing business organization with a customer who uses a product. A new client may exist found by a prospector and so turned over to an account managing director, or new accounts may be so rare that the account director is straight responsible for identifying and closing them. For case, if you sold beds to hospitals, new infirmary organizations are rare. A new hospital may be built, simply chances are adept that it is replacing an existing hospital or is function of an existing infirmary chain, so the business relationship would already have coverage.

Taylor Bergstrom, a Baylor University graduate, began his career every bit a sales representative prospecting for the Texas Rangers baseball team. Bergstrom spent a lot of time calling people who had purchased unmarried game tickets in an endeavour to sell them xv-game packages or other special-ticket packages. Today, Bergstrom is an account manager for the lodge. He works with season ticket holders to ensure that they have a bully feel over the class of a flavour, regardless of whether the Rangers win or lose. His sales goals include upgrading season ticket holders to more than expensive seats, identifying referral opportunities for new season-ticket sales, and selling special-result packages, such as political party packages to box-seat holders. While most account managers sell to businesses, some, like Bergstrom, sell to individual consumers.

Business relationship managers also have to identify lead users (people or organizations likely to use new, cutting-edge products) and build relationships with them. (Recall that we discussed atomic number 82 users in Chapter half-dozen "Creating Offerings".) Lead users are in a proficient position to help improve a company'southward offerings or develop new ones. Business relationship managers work closely with these lead users and build relationships across both their companies so that the ii organizations tin introduce together.

Other Types of Sales Positions

Before, nosotros stated that at that place are as well lodge takers and sales back up. These other types of salespeople exercise not actively solicit business. Order takers, though, do close sales while sales back up do non. Order takers include retail sales clerks and salespeople for distributors of products, similar plumbing supplies or electrical products, who sell to plumbers and electricians. Other guild takers may work in a call center, taking customer sales calls over the phone or Internet when customers initiate contact. Such salespeople carry sales quotas and are expected to hit those sales numbers.

Sales support work with salespeople to help make a sale and to have care of the customer subsequently the sale. At ResearchNow, a marketing research company headquartered in Dallas, sales support aid salespeople price projects and prepare bids. At Oracle, an information systems provider, sales support aid by engineering science solutions and, like at ResearchNow, pricing offerings and preparing proposals. At ResearchNow, the sales support staff likewise helps deliver the projection, whereas at Oracle, another team takes over when the auction is fabricated.

Key Takeaway

Salespeople act as representatives for other people, including employees who work in other parts of their companies. Salespeople create value for their customers, manage relationships, and gather information for their firms. There are four types of salespeople: missionary salespeople, trade salespeople, prospectors, and business relationship managers.

Review Questions

1. Salespeople play iii chief roles. What are they?
2. Salespeople create value in what two ways?
3. How does each type of salesperson create value?

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Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmarketing/chapter/13-1-the-role-professional-salespeople-play/

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