LEARN TO MANAGE SALES
For any company or organisation to have success financially it must have a desirable product. This product must be of need to a large proportion of the general public. Advertising, using all available media outlets, should get the message across. But the most important link after the manufacturing and advertising (marketing) is the salesperson/sales representative - The person who actually sells the product to the consumer. Without him, the financial/corporate world would come to a halt!
SELLING MORE IS NOT THE SAME AS MORE PROFIT!
This course will take you from developing a strong personality (confidence and knowledge) through to communication, marketing, dealing with upper management, getting to know your product, the A B C of selling, the opening and closing or a sale, stress management, how to increase your company's profits, etc.
LEARN TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISIONS
Lesson Structure
There are 9 lessons in this course:
-
Developing Sales Concepts
-
Goods & Services, Ways of Managing Sales, Developing a Sales Concept, Planning Ahead, Understanding Selling, Understanding Buyers, Steps in the Sales Order, Increasing Sales
-
Developing Sales Relationships
-
Sales Methods, Presentation & the Selling Personality (personality traits of a salesperson), Communication skills and conversational selling
-
Sales Ethics
-
The Law and Ethics, Social Problems, Pricing, Deceit, High Pressure Sales, Poor Quality Products, Predetermined Obsolescence, The Impact of Marketing and Selling on Society, Public Responses to Modern Marketing Trends (eg. Consumerism, Environmentalism etc), Enlightened Marketing
-
Building Product Knowledge
-
Good & Bad Features (eg. Make/trade name; Model; Purpose or use; How & where it is manufactured; Materials used; Wholesale/retail price; Guarantees; Warranty; Spare parts (availability and location); Service Costs)
-
Knowing the Competition etc.
-
Developing a Customer Strategy
-
Types of Buyers, Buyer Motivation, Difficult Buyers, Key Rules for Every Salesperson
-
Presentation Strategy Options
-
Displays (eg. Locating Your Displays For Best Results), Shop Layout, Trade Displays etc.
-
Closing a Sale
-
Difficulties with closing a sale & solutions, importance of the personal approach.
-
Managing Yourself
-
Time management, Territory management, Record Management, Sales Records, Stress Management
-
Managing a Sales Team
-
Building quality partnerships.
Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.
Aims
-
Explain how a sales concept reflects and aids the marketing goals of an organization.
-
Identify key ways to develop good sales relationships with customers and others.
-
Identify ethical and legal considerations in sales.
-
Explain the importance of product knowledge and what it includes.
-
Explain the role of a developed customer strategy and how to create one.
-
Identify elements of good product presentation.
-
Explain the stages of a sale and how to achieve results.
-
Describe the importance of self-management to sales success.
-
Identify and explain key methods for managing a sales team.
-
Identify and explain key methods for managing a sales team.
Good Marketing Management Begins with Good Staff
A marketing manager is only as good as the staff they have, and one of the most important attributes for moth the manager and their personnel, will be their ability to communicate clearly and in a way that engages customers and persuades them to buy.
Marketing success is often made or lost by language skills.
Everything from websites and social media, to advertisements and face to face selling, involves using words. If you choose the right words, marketing is more effective. A poor choice of words on the other hand, can result in diminished effectiveness.
Words Must Fit the Customer
Words need to be chosen to be appropriate to the people you are communicating with. As we said in the last chapter, wrong spellings for a country (behaviour or behavior, or pants in the UK and America), can result in lost opportunities or misdirected advertising on search engines.
Who are you speaking to?
The first thing you need to do in any marketing campaign is to identify your target market.
If you know your target market you can tailor the language you use to fit that market. You want as much information about that target market as possible in order to communicate directly with them.
Language Style is Critical
The language style is affected by not just the words you choose but also how you use them.
Language can be concise or verbose, formal or informal, subtle or forthright.
The tone of language can be loud or soft. It is obvious how the spoken word might be loud or gentle; but even written words can appear loud (e.g. If they are underlined, written in capitals or made bold). Your typography should reflect your message and be appropriate to your target market.
Communication is a Two Way Street
Create systems to foster feedback. Follow up customers after the sale (after sales service), to get a better and more up to date understanding of your market. You need to know and understand who is buying off you today, in order to best predict who might buy off you tomorrow.
Develop listening skills (or surveys) – listen to what your customers have to say. Why did they buy from you? Where did they find you? If you find that 10% of your customers are coming from social media, but you are spending 5% of your time on it, then it is a good trade off. But if you are spending 50% of your time writing blogs and only 2% of sales come from blogs, then it is not such an effective use of your time.
Getting feedback is not very valuable if you are unwilling to hear what is being said to you. You must be willing to listen to this feedback and act on it if there is enough evidence to support it, in order to improve your business and thus increase your sales.
Watch out for feedback that is out of character, or not normal. Sometimes feedback can be influenced by other things; and you need to take that into account. People who complain, become negative or aggressive are sometimes justified, but at other times their opinions can be influenced by other things that are happening in their lives. If they have had a recent bad event, then they may take that anger out on you and complain about you or your services. If someone does complain about you on public social media platform, then ask them in public for the exact problem and discuss what you can do to rectify it.
For example, a customer may complain that they sent in an order five weeks ago and you have not sent the product. This looks bad and other potential customers are seeing this on social media. But if you can reply and say that you tried to deliver the parcel, but they had given the incorrect address and you have been unable to contact them by phone, this more clearly justifies why you have not sent the product and also that you have been trying to sort it out.
If a person is on a high in their life, they may be excessively complimentary about the service you give them. A marketing professional needs to make a realistic assessment of feedback they get; and should be sceptical of contradictory or out of the ordinary feedback; both positive as well as negative.
Either way, regularly engaging with feedback is not only good practice, but a good way to keep an eye on the performance of your business.
Cross Cultural Communication
If you are communicating with people from cultures other than your own you need to learn something about those cultures, and then be sure that the message you are sending is the same message that is being received. In today's world, this is becoming an increasingly important aspect of marketing; with business becoming increasingly globalised, every year. Where once retailers competed with nearby shops; they now compete with international online retailers. Even many service industries that would previously hire people close to home, are now outsourcing work internationally.
Globalisation has created competition; but it also allows you to do business internationally; and if you can communicate with "internationally" effective language; you may do better in a global market than you might have ever hoped to do in a more restricted local market place.
Words Can Help You Sell
Certain words have been effective marketing words for a very long time; and irrespective of any changes that occur in how we communicate with people; these words are likely to remain largely effective for a long time to come. Examples include:
- Quality
- Service
- Value
- Guarantee
- Free
- Sale
- Discount
- Bonus
- Offer
If you can build these words into advertisements, brochures, websites, emails, conversations, or any other communications; they have the potential to trigger a positive response from a potential customer.
WHERE TO AFTER YOUR STUDIES?
Sales managers who understand the full sales process, know how to supervise and manage a team and can work to deadlines and budgets and make sure that their team does the same, are in big demand. Show your company that you are serious about advancing into a sales manager's role or learn more about how to manage a sales team. Expand your skills if you are already managig a team.
This course is relevant over all industries: is there is a product to sell and a team to manage, then this course will be of benefit.
Start your studies here with ACS and our experienced industry savvy team of tutors.
ENROL or Use our FREE Course Advice Service to Connect with a Tutor