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2013

[SALES AND DISTRIBUTION PROJECT]


SUBMITED TO VINEET NERURKAR SIR. SUBMITED BY GOPAL MISHRA.

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SALES PROCESS

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In business science a sales process describes an approach to selling a product or service. The sales process has been approached from the point of view of an engineering discipline (see sales process engineering). Sales process is focused on having a clear understanding of the customers buying process, mapping the companys sales process directly to it, defining the work flows an opportunity needs to adheres to, and managing to the mission critical process of accelerating an opportunity from one stage to the next. Sales is rocket science. And just as rocket science is built from a foundation of physical and mathematical laws and principles, sales can be distilled to its very simple laws and principles. While branded selling systems and approaches serve several purposes (they help differentiate sales books and training material in order to sell them better as well as assist in articulating a message so its easily learned and/ or implemented) the simple laws and principles underlying them all have remained relatively unchanged since the beginning of time.

A Sales Process that is Properly Followed Produces these Results:


1. 2. 3. 4. An improvement in forecasting accuracy Repeatability of successes Sales managers converting from administrators to effective coaches Higher customer satisfaction due to improved rep professionalism

How to create a sales process


At my company weve had the privilege to work with dozens of early stage startups, helping them establish their sales processes. Some ask us to build their process from the ground up. Many come to us solely looking for guidance as they develop their own sales processes and teams. In both

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cases, the best campaigns are those in which the founders are actively involved with developing the process, or have conducted their startups early sales themselves. For tech entrepreneurs without sales experience, heres how you build a sales process for your startup from the ground up.

1. Begin customer outreach as soon as possible


The best thing you can do to develop your sales process is to get out there as early as possible. That Lean Startup mentality works just as well in sales as it does for development. Spend a week, even a few days, picking up the phone and cold-calling your customers and getting a feel of how to communicate best with them. During these early calls youll get a sense of their challenges, objections you might face, hopefully how a good call should go as well as direct customer feedback about your product. You might even realize a key aspect of your product that needs to be tweaked before you push hard into the market. As a founder, you absolutely need to do this before handing it off to someone else. Conducting preliminary outreach to your customers will help you better understand your customer, their needs and your market place, as well as refine your product as you develop your sales process.

2. Do a full walkthrough of a close


Walk through simulated conversations that begins with finding the lead and travel through the complete sales process ending with handing the customer off to your support team. Do this with colleagues who understand your space, then try your pitch on someone who doesnt. Outsiders quickly notice problems and inefficiencies. These scenarios not only give you great practice before implementing your process, theyll help you identify gaps in it. Say on your first call you get a

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customers credit card, then what? How do you process the payment? Who do they speak to next? Mock calls are a great way to practice your pitch and refine the logistics of a sale. This is obviously best to do before you deal with a ton of customers, and look like an idiot because you dont know how to use Stripe.

3. Establish qualifying criteria


Qualifying criteria is a list of traits that makes a lead a good fit (qualified) to buy your product. Sounds easy enough, but lots of young companies have no idea what they need to know about a customer to make a sale. So how do you develop qualifying criteria and track them? Common criteria for leads are:

Does your product solve their pain point? Does your product save them money/cost? Does your product save them time? Is your product in their budget? Are they using a competitors product and paying for it? How fast can they make a buying decision?

Its best to develop just five criteria based on what you think you need to know about a buyer, and then reach out to a subset of customers. Identify those five criteria in the customers, and then see if the criteria need to be expanded, or even cut down, to know they would be a good fit. Once you close a few deals, look back at the deals and figure out what you really needed to know in the first conversation to mark someone as qualified and move the deal to a close. Do not get into the habit of marking every lead qualified, because you had a nice conversation. Most folks are nice over the phone, and the myth of getting chewed out by a lead is the exception rather than the rule. Remember, a qualified deal is very different than an active opportunity. A

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qualified lead should be a prospect that matches all of the criteria to purchase your product, and one that has expressed interest in learning more and speaking again. An active opportunity is a qualified lead with a value attached to it. This means that you have communicated the cost of the product/service to the prospect, they understand it, and have expressed that it is in within their budget.

4. Establish a sales script


A good call script is a way for you to guide a customer through your sales process from start to finish, while showing them the value of your product/service. A good call script typically has the following sections:

Introduction Qualifying questions Q&A about features, pricing, and next steps Asking for the close Managing customer objections Establishing next steps

Developing a script is an iterative process, but begins with research. Know your product and how it fits into the market, and find a way to convey that as simply as possible to the customer. Its important that your script incorporates your qualifying questions (so you know theyre a good fit), common pain points, and benefits around which to position your solution. Its also important to include objections that your future sales reps will encounter during their calls.

5. Establishing a conversion funnel

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Heres an example of the ideal basic conversion funnel: calls/emails > reaches > qualified buyers > closed deals A conversion funnel should be built with a reverse approach. Establish a range of deals youd like closed over the course of a week or even a month. Then ask yourselves to close that many deals, how many active opportunities/deals do I need to qualify in order to achieve that goal? This is called a conversion rate. This will help you determine how many qualified opportunities you need to achieve in order to reach your closed deal goal. But how many scheduled calls or demos do you need to perform each week to in order achieve the desired amount of qualified opportunities? Using the conversion rates youve estimated (be conservative), determine how many calls/emails, or leads generated, you need each week in order to schedule that target amount of calls. Its important to note that the amount of calls or emails you need to send each week is pretty large this is the top of the funnel. In turn, this might mean that your closed deals goal might be too large. Start with a number you believe to be attainable, but aggressive. Work through the entire process and reach the goals you set out at the beginning of the week. Once youve done that, start increasing your goal by 10 percent each month. You need to have 10 percent month-over-month growth to really have a healthy funnel as a startup.

6. Optimize implementation
Sales doesnt end with the close as a sales person you need to make sure that the customer is successfully integrated, and this means a clean handoff to your support team. As you develop your sales process, communicate with your customer success team and check in with your customers to see how theyre doing. As a founder, youll quickly find out ways to improve your

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process and ensure that your customers stick around. This is also crucial in order to secure customer references integral in bringing in new business down the road.

7. Iterate, iterate, iterate


Just because something works, doesnt mean its the best way to do it. Make sure you are constantly stress testing your process to figure out whats broken. Maybe your script is still a bit clunky, or emails dont generate the response rates youd like, or your conversion rate is too low. Dont get stuck doing something because it works well enough. Lack of iteration is what prevents companies from making a good sales process great. Its crucial that you, as the founder, conduct some of this early outreach and help develop your companys sales process. Early customer engagement can provide some of the best insights as you look to improve your product or service. Only once youve developed this repeatable process, and know it works, you can confidently hand-off sales to a director that can refine the process even more.

The 7 Steps of the Sales Process


1. Product Knowledge
This step is fairly straight forward, but it is also the great undoing of many a technical expert turned sales person. When one is extremely well versed in a particular product especially a technical one, it is easy to get caught up in a monologue of all the great features it provides. The technical expert turned sales person is so eager to explain how the product works or why its unique that the benefits to the customer are left out of the discussion. Never assume that a prospect will easily link a feature to a benefit. That relationship must be stated clearly (something done in the presentation step 4, after the needs assessment step 5). The acquiring of product knowledge for a technician therefore, is less about the features of the product itself, and more about how the customer will benefit from those features. When discussing product, the technicians mantra should be; So what? Consider those two words to be what the prospect thinks every time a feature is mentioned, and re-learn your product from that perspective.

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2. Prospecting
Prospecting, just as the word implies, is about searching for new customers. Like product knowledge, this step may seem fairly straight forward but upon closer examination it becomes more complex. The key to prospecting effectively is knowing where to dig and what to look for. Its also important to distinguish between a lead, a prospect, and a qualified prospect. The most important element in this step is to create a profile of existing customers. This may have been done at your company, but have approach tactics (step3) been tailored to match each profile. For instance, you may have identified the following major market segments: State Governments, County Governments, Consulting Firms, Federal Agencies, Utilities, Universities, but have you fully profiled each of these in order to adjust marketing tactics appropriately? A direct mail, seminar invitation might work well to generate State Government leads, but will it be effective in developing Consulting Firm leads? For each market segment do you really know what the ideal customer looks like? These questions should be answered fully in the Tactics portion of a marketing plan. In the broadest sense, prospecting is an ongoing process that everyone in the company (particularly the sales force) should be involved in. This simply means everyone should have their prospecting radar up when they are out and about in the world. Very often, a great lead turned customer was first discovered after being heard or seen in the news at a party, or event, etc.

3. The Approach
This is where the rubber meets the road in the sales process. For our present purposes lets consider the approach in the context of a sales call rather than lead generation (i.e. the difference between a mass mailing and a telephone call). This is the step where you begin to build a relationship and the intelligence gathering continues (it started with prospecting). A good approach is crucial to sales success because it will either identify you as a bothersome salesperson and cause a prospects guard to go up, or it will identify you as an obliging salesperson with something of value to offer. (There is probably a middle road too, but you get the idea.). Consider the example of tele-marketers selling a seminar: Their product is a seminar, about which they presumably have sufficient knowledge. They prospect by scanning the house lists for appropriately titled leads, (generated by earlier prospecting efforts). They approach by saying Im Jay from XYZ and Im calling to follow up on an invitation to a seminar that we mailed

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to you last week. Do you recall receiving it? Then the dialog begins, often its perfunctory, other times however it can be extremely informative. The difference more often than not depends on how astute and articulate the caller is. What do you think is good about this approach? What do you think is bad? Quite often the type of call one makes is a follow up to some action i.e. seminar attendance, brochure mailed, etc. Technically these calls are part of follow up step 7, but let us address them in the context of a sales approach. What would be a good approach for each of the above follow up actions? Think about eliciting information and advancing the sale (closing, step 6). What would be a good approach for a cold call? Additional Note on recording information: Regardless of the type of call or the results, it is important to take detailed call notes and schedule a subsequent action item, no matter what it is be it a week, a month, or a year down the road. (One can invent a system of abbreviations to make this easier i.e. LVM = left voice mail.) History notes are important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is tracking where a prospect is in the sales process, including what follow up is necessary and when. Noting that packet was mailed or attended seminar or inquired about model is only half the information and not the most important. Why?

4. The Needs Assessment


This is arguably the most important step of the sales process because it allows you to determine how you can truly be of service. To be a highly effective salesperson, that is to sell to the prospects needs, you first have to understand what those needs are. This means you must think in terms of solving a prospects problem. The only way to do that is by asking lots of questions. Does a health practitioner prescribe remedies before a thorough exam? Asking good questions will not only help you determine what will best suit the prospects needs, but it builds confidence, trust, and will very often help the prospect consider issues they may never have thought of. This last point is powerful because it provides an opportunity to showcase features, which the prospects answers led you to. What questions would you ask to illustrate how your product is different/better than a competitors. Although intelligence gathering occurs throughout the sales process, it is at step four where it happens in earnest. What other information would be important to gather at this stage? (hint: whos who, referrals).

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5. The Presentation
Remember the discussion in step one, focus on benefits rather than features? If you consider your product/service in terms of how it benefits the customer, your presentation will be a focused and relevant dialogue rather than a self aggrandizing monologue. Nothing is worse than a sales presentation which proceeds from the sellers perspective. This is why the needs assessment is so important and why it will ideally flow in and out of this step. A good needs assessment allows you to tailor your presentation to your audience, and keep it interactive.

6. The Close
Eighty percent of sales are lost because a salesperson fails to close. Closing is about advancing the sales process to ultimately get an order. What you are trying to sell at each stage may be different. For example, a close early in the sales process may be to get an appointment to discuss your product/service, in that case you are selling an appointment not a widget. In a later stage you might need to meet with a committee, in that case what you are selling is a meeting. Seeing the sale process in this light takes a little pressure off of each encounter and makes things a bit more manageable. But dont be lulled into complacency, you must ultimately ask for the order and no sales conversation should ever end without an agreement to some next step. Do not be satisfied with well get back to you, where is the agreement in that? What could you say in response to such a remark in order to advance the sale? In large part, closing is about discovering obstacles. Have you heard these before: Ill need to think about it., Its too expensive., Let me run it buy some other people. Sounds good but Ive already got one. What could you say to overcome these objections? There are lots of ways to close, indeed closing a sale has become a science unto itself. Books have been written on this topic alone. But there is one elemental truth if you dont ask you dont get. Just for fun, following is a sampling of a few closing techniques from among the many: The Ask For It Close. What do we need to do to get this model into your organization? The If-Then Close. If I could demonstrate how an XYZ model provides you with, (things you know are important based on the prospect needs assessment) then would you be willing to demo, rent, buy, switch, etc.

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The Process Of Elimination Close. So you like the model, you have use for it, its not too expensive! The Either Or Close. Will that be cash or charge? The Lost Puppy Close. I guess I didnt do my job very well. Additional note: The question How much does it cost? Is a great buying signal yet it is a question you want to avoid early in the sales process. What could you say to defer that question politely? When you do mention price, dont be afraid that they are too high, say it with pride. Dont forget to ask for the referral.

7. Follow-up
Good follow up will double your closing ratio. When a sales person makes contact with a prospect a relationship has been built, and follow up is how it is nurtured. Staying at the forefront of a prospects mind requires persistence and should not be confused with being bothersome. This is why its important to get agreement on some next step each time there is contact. Follow up therefore should never end. The pace may slow but it will never end. When a sale is made, then a new type of follow up begins. Follow up conversations are best handled by the salesperson who started the relationship. Who else can better gauge a prospects willingness to buy, or pick up where we last left off. This means that detailed notes must be kept on each prospect with particular emphasis on their state of mind. It is unwise and ineffective to keep track of this information anywhere other than a centralized database.

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Customer segment

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Customer segmentation is the practice of dividing a customer base into groups of individuals that are similar in specific ways relevant to marketing, such as age, gender, interests, spending habits and so on. Customer segmentation allows a company to target specific groups of customers effectively and allocate marketing resources to best effect. According to an article by Jill Griffin for Cisco Systems, traditional segmentation focuses on identifying customer groups based on demographics and attributes such as attitude and psychological profiles. Value-based segmentation, on the other hand, looks at groups of customers in terms of the revenue they generate and the costs of establishing and maintaining relationships with them. Customer segmentation procedures include: deciding what data will be collected and how it will be gathered; collecting data and integrating data from various sources; developing methods of data analysis for segmentation; establishing effective communication among relevant business units (such as marketing and customer service) about the segmentation; and implementing applications to effectively deal with the data and respond to the information it provides. The act of separating a group of clients into sets of similar individuals that are related from a marketing or demographic perspective. For example, a business that practices customer segmentation might group its current or potential customers according to their gender, buying tendencies, age group, and special interests.

Consumer segmentation
The process of classifying people into groups that have some set of similar characteristics, resulting in the ability to be studied and targeted. The most basic method is to segment by simple demographics such as age, income, or marital status. The goal is to identify relatively homogeneous groups with similar behavior that will assist in customizing the message and/or offer for each segment.

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Some companies target only one macro group, such as the AARP attracting anyone 50 years old or older. Others have much more sophisticated segmentation schemes, using dozens, or even hundreds of variables. The advent of accessible computer technology, the development of new statistical methods, and the availability of US Census data have all contributed to a whole new industry specializing in multi-tiered consumer segmentation. Add to this the standardization of geographic definitions and you now have a powerful basket of measurable variables that can help segment the population in a very detailed fashion. the ability to classify, study and target consumers (both your own customers and the general population) using two different, yet partially correlated segmentation typologies:
1 Geodemographics 2 Psychographics

Both systems provide you with incredible insight into the consumer market, generating results that are both measurable and actionable.

Geodemographics
In general, this segmentation method links the sciences of demography (the study of human population dynamics), geography and sociology. Its premise is that people with similar cultural backgrounds, means and perspectives naturally gravitate toward one another, resulting in relatively homogeneous communities (birds of a feather flock together). The theory goes, once settled in, people naturally emulate their neighbors, adopt similar social values, tastes and expectations and, most important to marketers, share similar patterns of consumer behavior toward products, services, media and promotions. Thus, you are able to classify neighborhoods and their households into clusters or groups of neighborhoods based on their underlying socioeconomic and demographic composition.

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A number of companies specialize in geodemography, applying their own set of variables and segmentation techniques to delineate the entire US population into a number of clusters that are large enough to provide substantial distinctions between groups, yet are small enough to be manageable. You can use these clusters to segment your customer base, identify profitable groups, find new customers, locate sites for stores, buy advertising, target direct mail, guide promotional activities, and develop new products. Impakt is in a position to help you incorporate geodemographic segmentation into your marketing strategy. Very quickly you will see your customer base in a whole new light. You will be able to isolate groups that are most profitable (and least profitable), then build a highly targeted campaign to attract those individuals of most interest to your company. You will then be able to measure the effectiveness of all your marketing elements and make educated adjustments and refinements for each subsequent round of marketing and promotional activities.

Psychographics
To further target your marketing efforts, you should have a method to not only determinewho is or will buy your product, but identify what makes them want to buy as well. Psychographic segmentation is a powerful method to delineate consumers based on their personalities, values, attitudes, interests, and/or lifestyles - - that is, you are identifying and measuring those attributes (behavioral, economic and interpersonal) that drive consumer behavior. As part of our underlying objective of developing marketing and promotional programs that make an IMPACT, we have partnered with the top provider of psychographic segmentation to identify the motivations of your best customers and prospects, thus leading to the most effective message and method of delivery.

GeoMapping

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Every segmentation typology on the market today includes some sort of link to geography. This, of course, is critical because your marketing message needs to reach your customers and prospects. And, as stated earlier, knowing where different clusters of people live gives you the opportunity to target your activities in the most efficient and effective manner. Thus, analyzing your target population according to geographic boundaries (such as zip code, census tract, postal route, etc.) gives you an organized and easy-to-understand method to identify where you are strong, where you are not reaching your target, and everywhere inbetween. But geogrpahic analysis does not just consist of generating reports. With the advent of geographic information systems (GIS), marketers are able to actually map analysis results. Thus, you can see different population variables based on their physical distribution. Often, once mapped, you get a very different perspective of your marketplace. Literally within seconds you can see where your customers reside and how your target population clusters are distributed. Very powerful stuff! Because segmented geography plays a key role in determining the level of IMPACT, we have partnered with one of the leading providers of GIS. We are thus able to offer you vivid insight into the market you serve.

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National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited

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Commodity exchange in India plays an important role to organize the prices of an y commodity that are fluctuating. Recently Government of India introduced the Online Commodity Exchanges to ensure better risk coverage and delivery of commodities. In India there are number of recognized future exchanges amongst which the prominent ones are the three national level multi-commodity exchanges. These exchanges are under the supervision of Forward Market Commission (FMC) of Government of India. They are:

National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX)- it is a public limited company, located in Mumbai. Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited (MCX)- it is an
independent and de-mutualized exchange with a permanent recognition from Government of India.

National Multi-Commodity Exchange of India Limited (NMCEIL)- is the first de-mutualized, Electronic Multi-Commodity
Exchange in India and it has been granted approval by the Government to organize trading in the edible oil complex.

The Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) has issued the policy of foreign investment in commodity exchanges in the Press Note No. 2 (2008) wherein the overall foreign investment in commodity exchanges would be capped at 49%. The Government of India has proposed that Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) can pick up 23% stake in commodity exchanges but will have no representation on the board of directors, of commodity exchange. The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for commodity exchanges would be limited to 26% therefore, allowing the composite ceiling of foreign investment in commodity exchanges up to 49%. These guidelines for foreign holdings have been drawn conditional to the norms of the equities markets.

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Another layer of safeguard as per the policy is that foreign investors, including persons acting in concert, cannot hold more than 10% of the equity in these companies and no single investor can hold more than 5% equity in domestic commodity exchanges. In addition, clearance by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) is mandatory for foreign investment in these exchanges. Lastly the FII purchases are restricted to secondary markets only. The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

Which are the major commodity exchanges in India?


There are 24 commodity exchanges in India. There are three national level commodity exchanges to trade in all permitted commodities. They are: Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd, Mumbai (MCX)

www.mcxindia.com MCX is an independent and de-mutualised multi commodity exchange. MCX features amongst the world's top three bullion exchanges and top four energy exchanges. Its key shareholders are Financial Technologies (I) Ltd., State Bank of India and it's associates, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. (NSE), Fid Fund (Mauritius) Ltd. - an affiliate of Fidelity International, Corporation Bank, Union Bank of India, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank and SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd. National Commodity and Derivative Exchange, Mumbai (NCDEX) A consortium of institutions promotes NCDEX. These include the ICICI Bank Limited (ICICI Bank), Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE).

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National Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd, Ahmedabad (NMCE) It is the first de-mutualised electronic multi-commodity Exchange of India. Some of its key promoters are Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC), National Agricultural Co Operative Marketing Federation of India Limited (NAFED), Gujarat Agro Industries Corporation Limited (GAIC) and Punjab National Bank (PNB).

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