Question 1 (Yifan Du)
Prospecting is a salesperson’s activity that involves locating potential clients for a specific product or service. The prospecting plan focuses on the salesperson’s prospecting activities thus turning the prospects into opportunities. Strategic prospecting is a process that is designed to identify, qualify, and prioritize sales opportunities. Strategic prospecting is used to determine whether the sales opportunities depicts new potential customers or are just opportunities to generate revenue from existing clients. Therefore ‘strategic prospecting plan’ is a salesperson’s plan for gathering qualified prospects. Developing a strategic prospecting plan is helpful in more sales leads, which results in overall business growth. The components of a strategic prospecting plan include set goals, allocate time, keep records, stay positive, and evaluate. Set goals components involve establishing daily, weekly, and monthly quotas that help in the acquisition of new prospects. Allocate time component involves establishing a regular daily schedule used in conducting prospecting activities. Keep records component involves results tracking by the use of different prospecting methods. Stay positive components involve developing confidence by acknowledging products and having the belief that you are offering the best solution. Evaluate components involve comparing your results and methods to focus on what works best.
Prospecting must be a critical ongoing process since it helps in developing the pipeline of potential customers available in the market. Prospecting also is a primary means of generating revenue and protection from customer turnover effects. Prospecting allows sales personnel to keep track of new customers that replace the lost ones. Prospecting allows the salespeople to perform a customer-based evaluation to prevent customer loss due to law satisfaction, competition, economic fluctuations, and other attritions.
Question 2 (Yifan Du)
Differentiation refers to the introduction of unique, distinctive characteristics and features to a product or service that ensures it has a unique selling proposition in the market and it stands out from the competitors. The concept of differentiation is a vital marketing technique essential in a business economic gain of an organization in achieving a competitive advantage over similar products’ substitute offering organizations. Differentiation concept involves qualities that customers usually value when undertaking purchasing decision evaluation and are not easily duplicated. Differentiation can be implemented in two processes that is the price and non-price differentiation. While price differentiation involves differentiating products basing solely on the price factor, non-price differentiation involves differentiating products basing on non-price factors such as features, functions, quality, and brand image. There are two types of differentiation; vertical and horizontal differentiation. Vertical differentiation focuses on quality differentiation metrics intending to push the quality of the products up the hierarchy thus acting as a competitive advantage trait. Horizontal differentiation involves specific feature differentiation metrics.
In a corporate interview process, corporates can differentiate themselves based on their product, service, distribution, relationship, reputation, and price differentiation. In terms of product differentiation, a corporate can differentiate itself based on the features, performance, and efficacy of the product it offers. In terms of service differentiation, a corporate can differentiate itself from other competitors basing on customer service it offers. A corporate can differentiate itself on a distribution differentiation basis basing on its channels of distribution that provide expertise and technical services. Reputational differentiation to corporates entails differentiating based on brand image.
Question 3 (Yifan Du)
Understanding the client’s challenges at times becomes difficult not only to the organization but also to the sales professionals and if not managed properly can lead to loss of the customer. Therefore, there are some key analytical factors that sales personnel need to be aware of. Customer feedback-sales personnel need to analyze the customer feedback for any complaints raised in regards to the quality or performance of the organization’s product or service. Customer complaints when not analytically can lead the customer to terminate the relationship with the organization. Customer buying behavior- sales professionals should analyze their key clients buying behavior to effectively evaluate their periodic buying. In case a clients’ buying behavior changes, then the sales personnel should be worried and get to understand the reasons behind the changes. Customer satisfaction levels- sales personnel should be much aware of their key customer’s satisfaction level either by introducing a Likert scale satisfaction grading or a yes or no response framework to learning the satisfaction level of their clients whenever they make the purchase. Through the satisfaction level response, the sales personnel can understand the challenges that their clients are facing.
Moreover, the sales professional should also be aware of market competitor pricing. Competitor favorable pricing can sway an organization’s clients to a dilemma about whether to change their acquisition organization. When a salesperson understands the market competitor’s pricing strategies, they will understand the potential dilemmas that their clients may face with the competitor market. Customer relationships- sales personnel should also analyze the types of relationships that they commit to their clients. Maintaining good relationships with clients will make them communicate whenever they experience a challenge.
Question 4 (Yifan Du)
Market share entails a percentage of an industry total sales attributed to a specific company. Market share is computed by measuring the sales’ or units’ percentage attributed to an organization in the overall market. Market share analytics involves processes and technologies for measuring, managing, and analyzing the total sales in the market contributed by a specific organization. In performing market share analytics, the sales individuals need to employ strategies such as economies of scale, an organization’s market power, and the quality of management that relates market share to return on investment. Market share analytics enables the organization to analyze its contribution to contribution to the market and evaluate the company’s products and services that promote the organization’s redundancy.
When performing market share analytics, decisions have to be made on whether to analyze the market share based on unit sales (volume) or revenue shares (value). Market share can be expressed in two ways that value market share and volume market share. Value market share or revenue market share is based on a company’s total shares expressed as a percentage of the total market segment sales. In expressing market share in terms of value market share, the dollar value earned by the product sales is divided by the dollar value earned by the total market segment sales. Volume market shares also known as unit market share involves the actual number of units that a specific company sells out of the total units sold with a specific market segment as a particular period. In expressing market share in terms of unit market share the total number of units that a company has sold over a certain period is divided by the total number of units sold within the same period in the market.
Question 5 (Yifan Du)
When wrapping up an agreement or negotiation process with a client, as a professional salesperson, some of the questions to be asked include the following: (1) Do you have any questions? A salesperson should not assume that his explanation of the product or service is perfect, rather while closing up an agreement, he should ask the client if he has any questions. (2) What have you heard about this product? This question plays a critical role in closing the negotiation process since it will indicate to the sale person whether the client has accurate information about the product and its functionality. (3) Why do you need that particular feature? This question puts intimacy on the clients to acknowledge the features of your product as superior to your competitors thus will narrow him down to closing the negotiation process. (4) How would you see us working together? This question is vital in creating a mental connection between the salesperson and clients. They envision your teams collaborating to facilitate the mental connection. (5) What would have you offered differently? This question will give the client a chance to give a proposal on how you can improve the product or services to enter a new market.
When ending a series of interviews on a career, an individual can ask the following questions. (1) Is there anything about my qualification that makes you doubt the career professionalism that I can clarify? This question opens up the discussion process to eliminate any negative impression that you presented during the interview. (2) Have I answered all your questions? This question should be the first to asked to find out anything that they need clarification. (3) What has been your best moment in this company? This question asks the interviewers to reflect on their experience with the company and show values that they have learned.