 One should have at least basic understanding of other side’s expectations

 These expectations often depend on:

 Demographic variables (age, gender, national and ethnic culture, profession, etc.)
 Psychographic variables
 Knowledge level of the audience
 Interest level of the audience

Implication
 In any task, the better we fulfill other party’s expectations, the more effective we are
perceived in that task
 In other words, we should understand other party’s expectations to make our interaction
as effective as possible
 Communication happens on listener’s terms

Thomas Analysis Background

 The most used organizational psychology analysis method in the world
 It helps you to RECRUIT, DEVELOP, PROMOTE, MOTIVATE, MANAGE, AND
RETAIN
 PPA – Personal Profile Analysis

Thomas Variables
1. Dominance highest
 Competitive, direct, demanding, energetic
2. Influence highest
 Optimistic, participative, excited, outgoing
3. Steadiness highest
 Friendly, thoughtful, helpful, reliable
4. Compliance highest
 Exact, logical, controlled, hard working
Motivators and Personality
STRONGEST CHARACTERISTIC MOTIVATORS FEARS

Dominance Results Loss of control

Challenges Failure
Power Inefficiency

Influence Favorable atmosphere Negativity

Freedom Routines
Popularity Details

Steadiness Safety Uncertainty

Sincerity Lack of confidence
Honesty Change

Compliance Rules and standards Chaos

Clear processes Lack of completion
Applying own expertise Emotions

How to deal with high Dominance:

 Get quickly to the point, time is money, always in a hurry
 Emphasize benefits, especially financial ones, and be sure you can prove them
 Dominance don’t fear confrontation, neither should you (but just to be safe, let them win)
 Ask questions which make D figure out the point himself
 Compliment D’s ideas, not D himself
 Be well organized and efficient with the time

How to deal with high Influence:

  Likes new, unusual and exciting things
 Usually not in a hurry, loves talking and interaction
 Feelings often more important than facts => package your offering well
 Gets excited easily but doesn’t necessarily mean much
 Leaves details to you
 References and recommendations important

How to deal with high Steadiness:

 Takes time to build trust – never try to proceed too fast
 Don’t be aggressive as S easily locks up
 Emphasize reliability, good reputation, warranty and support
 Extremely important to keep the promises
 Expects quiet personal attention and concentration
 Listening skills are the key

How to deal with high Compliance:

 Be well prepared, because C already is
 C is very interested in details
 Graphs, stats, tables, demonstrations…
 Likes to have everything in writing
 C keeps his distance and expects you to do the same
 Suspicious of anything that is too good
 Discuss also the negatives to appear objective

NEGOTIATION
  Dialogue focused on an agreement between two or more parties

Key Elements
 Voluntary relationship
 Common interests
 Conflict of interests
 Expectations of give and take

What is at Stake?
 Tangibles
- price, terms, wording, anything specific
 Intangibles
- ”winning and beating the other party”
- being fair, maintaining relationship
- reputation
- principles
- maintaining precedence
- saving face - looking good to constituents

CONCERN for the OUTCOME

 The approach of a negotiator is dictated by two issues:
 Concern for the OWN OUTCOME
 Concern for the OTHER’S OUTCOME

FIVE FUNDAMENTAL STYLES OF MANAGING A NEGOTIATION

 1. Competing: convince the other party to accept a position that only favors our OWN
interests.
2. Accomodating: focus on the other party’s needs, rather than our own.
3. Avoiding: the negotiator neither pushes own objectives nor shows concern for the other’s
objectives
4. Compromising: splitting the difference
- Calculate the result, view the issue in fixed-sum terms
- Each party gets a piece of the cake

5. Collaborating: both parties work together to maximize the joint outcome.

 Shared goals and interests

NEGOTIATION
- sources of power -
 Position (ability to reward or punish)
 Information (knowledge is power)
 Expert image
 Referent (communication and people skills, charisma)
 Associative or publicity power (powerful friends or access to media to present your
point-of-view)
 Supply and demand (customer often has more choices and thereby more power)
 Control of variables
- Place and seating arrangement
- Timing and agenda
- Team composition

 Negotiation skill
 Careful planning and preparation

NEGOTIATION TACTICS:
Five classes:

 PLANNING tactics
 SUPPLY and DEMAND tactics
 TIME tactics
 INFORMATIVE tactics
 AUTHORITY tactics

PLANNING TACTICS
 Place to negotiate
 The agenda preparation
 Procedure
 Team composition
 Drawing up the minutes
 Seating arrangement

SUPPLY AND DEMAND TACTICS

 Take it or leave it, last and final offer’
 ‘Make a realistic offer, be serious’
 Little-by-little
 Bogey tactic:
- Using limits: financial, principled, technical, juridical
- This is as far as I am authorized to go
- You need help from the supplier

 Precedent:
- Previous contracts
- Contracts with other customers or suppliers
 Keep it simple: rounding off, average, … !!!
 Salami tactic: you are very closed but the competition is closer
 The audition:
 - Inviting the different suppliers at the same moment
 Package deal:
- Adding advantages, benefits, …
 Chinese crunch:
- Giving the salesman the impression that you agree, but there is still one little
detail
 Chinese auction:
- Explain me why I should buy from you

TIME TACTICS
 2 options:
- Shortening the negotiations
- Extending the negotiations
 Showing patience:
- Essential: acceptance time
 Deadline:
- Can lead to concessions
 Deadlock, impasse:
- Leave further negotiations open
 Established fact:
- We agreed on this, counter with extra conditions

INFORMATIVE or QUESTIONING TACTICS

 Poker face:
- Hide your emotions
 Surprises:
- Ask for a time-out
 Listening: active listening
 Silence:
- Requires strong nerves
  Clearing the snow:
- Too much information requires time
- Time is melting the snow
 Good guy – bad guy:
- The offer of the salesman
- The offer of the sales manager, but be careful

AUTHORITY TACTICS
 Limited or full :
- Showing limited authority gives you the possibility to fall back on someone else
 Using the hierarchy:
- I agree, will you explain it to my boss
- Dealing the authority: can you explain this to my colleagues
 Lack of information on the authority:
- Having the nerves
Relation between POWER and TACTICS

Supply and
Informative
demand Concessions
tactics
tactics

Position is Knowledge
power is power

Planning and
time tactics

Personality is
power

Authority
tactics

DECENT AND LEGAL

 Extreme conditions
 Bluff poker:
- you ‘ve got to do better than that
 Warning for non-existing danger:
- Price increases, almost no stock, …
 Keeping the strong arguments for the end
 Manipulating the agenda
CAN BE INDECENT
 Salami tactic
 Quasi agreement
 Manipulating: intimidation
 Good guy, bad guy
 Denying his own authority
 Emotional explosions
 Lowball: below the belt
 Bogey: could be false
 Deadline
 Straw issues

ILLEGAL
 Wrong information: annual report
 Fraud, lying, cheating
 Threatening: blackmail
 Boiler room tactics: pressure
 Actions outside the negotiation room
PERSONAL SELLING
 One of the tools in promotion mix of marketing
 Communication based on one-to-one contacts and verbal presentation skills which aims
at making sales.
 Contacts face-to-face or via a communication tool
 Central to the success of marketing and entire business operation
 The only way for most companies to generate revenue

EVERYONE IS A SELLER
 selling their ideas and opinions
 selling their skills and expertise
 selling their personality
 selling their company
 selling goods and services

OBJECTIVE OF SELLING
To help a customer to buy given that there is:
- customer need
- product that fulfills that need
- realistic expectations
- ability to buy
- profit opportunity
= chance for mutual benefit

TWO TYPES OF SELLING

1. Store selling
 customer contacts the seller
  marketing effort has been already made to attract a customer into the premises
 sales efforts consist mainly of customer service and incremental sales

2. Field selling
 seller contacts the customer
 seller must find potential customers, identify their needs and offer solutions

 mainly business-to-business

SELLING APPROACHES
 Music box
- seller presents similar rehearsed speech to every customer
 Push-button
- seller pushes customers to certain direction by finding their weak point
 Blake & Mouton Grid Theory – based on personality
- ”who cares” seller
- aggressive seller
- ”customers’ friend”
- problem solver

PRODUCTIVITY OF SELLING

1.Quantity of work
 depends on motivation and energy
 motivators of sales force:
- commission based pay
- distinctive tasks
- feedback/acknowledgement/encouragement
 - responsibility
- contests
- training/new tasks
2. Quality of work
 product knowledge
 company knowledge
 industry knowledge
 sales skills
 people skills
 right attitude
3. Targets of work
 addressing time and energy to most profitable products, customers and task.

WHY DOES A SALES SITUATION FAIL?

 Seller talks too much and listens too little
 Seller is afraid to help customer to buy
 Seller focuses on himself instead of a customer (”I think...”)
 Seller is too aggressive
 Seller confuses the customer
 Seller is incompetent and tries to avoid the selling situation

STAGES IN SELLING PROCESS

1. Pre-approach
2. Approach
3. Negotiation
4. After sales
 1. PRE-APPROACH
 Prospecting - finding and evaluating potential customers
 Developing and maintaining basic knowledge and skills
 Planning sales visits
- objectives
- company and buying people
- approach and timing
- materials
 Time management

2. APPROACH
 Customer is contacted through a letter, email, telephone, personal visit or a combination
of the above
 Possible objectives of contact stage:
- to create a good first impression
- to stimulate customer interest
- to set up the next meeting

3. SALES NEGOTIATION

WHAT IS SOLD AND IN WHICH ORDER?

 Sell yourself
- your personality
- your expertise
 Sell your company
  Sell your product
- the benefits for the customer
- the characteristics which prove the benefits
- the terms of sale including the price

a) Opening
b) Need specification
c) Product presentation
d) Addressing objections
e) Closing

a) Opening
 introduction 1: greeting, name, company...
- creating favorable atmosphere
- convincing customer that the seller is worth listening to

 introduction 2:
- getting to the point
- reference
- benefit
- question
- compliments

b) Need Specification
 define customer needs
 ask, listen, observe and test for understanding
 start out with easy questions
 make it easy to agree and difficult to disagree
 then follow up with more difficult questions
  the more the customer speaks, the better
- information
- motivation
- atmosphere
- commitment

c) Product Presentation
 after the customer needs are determined, the seller offers a suitable solution
 use ”funnel model” and ”CAB analysis” to present your best arguments
1. Funnel model (to select arguments)
 avoid those arguments in which competitor is stronger
 beware of those arguments in which customer is not interested
 only use a few well-chosen strong arguments instead of many mediocre
ones
2. CAB analysis (to formulate arguments)
 good sales arguments are built on product benefits (its problem-solving
capacity)
 customers do not buy a product because of its characteristics but because
of its benefits
 in persuasive speech, we will talk about benefits first to get the attention
and to stimulate interest
 then we tell about advantages to explain why the product offers such a
benefit
 characteristics are used only to prove that this advantage exists
 Each purchase is based on rational and emotional benefits
 Rational benefits, especially in B-to-B marketing, are perceived more
important
 Emotional benefits, however, usually determine the sale
- comfort, curiosity, need to belong, need to be different, avoiding
risks, variety
- laziness, greed, envy, selfishness, vanity
  Often the purchase is made based on emotional reasons and then
rationalized to ourselves and to others
 quoting price:
- if possible, leave it until the end (especially if the price is high)
- use steady, determined voice
- soften the price
 sandwich technique
 later savings could be emphazised
 compare to other expense
 divide by small unit or product’s life span

d) Addressing Objections
 Objectives
 maintaining constructive atmosphere
 understanding the basis for the objection:
o positive

- to get more information

- to show interest
o neutral

- objective disagreement
- to bargain
- to play the role of a customer - have dialogue
o negative

- subjective disagreement
- to avoid buying

 answer the objection

 in advance
  immediatly
 later

How to answer objections:

 never hurry - use silence
- buy time
- customer appreciates seller who takes comments seriously
- customers do not want to be pushed
- customer may withdraw the objection or mitigate it
 repeating objection may be considered
 appreciate the comment and agree as much as possible ”yes, that is
interesting point of view, but...”
 boomerang technique is great: ”yes...and...”
 let the customer answer the objection himself: ”What would have you
done with these problems?”

--------- the following only fit to certain situations ----------

 changing of topic
- ”but these colors are great, aren’t they?”
 new point-of-view
- ”so you think price is high, but have you thought what is the price
of happy home?”
 locking out
- ”is this the only thing that puzzles you?”
 porcupine technique:
- ”is this available in black?”
- ”would you like to have it in black?”
e) Closing

 If customer is interested, they will display closing signals

 Closing signals:
- positive statement about the product
- question about price, installation or delivery
- physical handling of the product
- more positive tone of speech
- asking other people’s opinion
 Seller must react to them
 Closing signal may come any time during the sales presentation and if ignored, it may
never come again => timing is crucial!
 Success of selling often depends on right closing techniques:
- assumption close (”so we could deliver on Friday?”)
- choice close (”do you want model 4000 or 8000?”)
- supply close (”tomorrow may be too late”)
- suggestion (”let’s sign so you can have the car by Monday”)
- continious yes close
- self-esteem close (”as a talented manager, you naturally choose this”)
- benefit summary close (”as we found out...”)
 After you have tried closing, it is customer’s turn and seller waits!
 Outcome:
- 1) yes 2) no 3) maybe
 You can try to close as many times as you want - some say five times is the minimum
 Besides making a sale another important objective is to make a good final impression

4. AFTER SALES
 Objective: Reinforce customer’s positive impression of the company and create a
customer relationship
 Tasks:
- Delivery, installation, training, servicing
- Inquiring customer satisfaction
- Updating and maintaining customer file
- Invoicing as agreed
- Public relations visits to customers
- Handling complaints and comments
 Handling complaints
- Listen to the whole complaint
- Try to calm down the irritated customer
- Define the basis for complaint
- Take complaint seriously and express regret
- Don’t start to argue with the customer
- Correct what you can and get help for the rest
- Take the blame and act quickly
 Reasons to appreciate complaints:
- Get information how to improve products
- Get a chance to improve the situation
- Prevent the customer from spreading the word (3/11, 26/27)

SALES PSYCHOLOGY
 Remember motivation – don’t sell products but benefits
 Hidden needs and rationalization
 Build customer commitment
- toward the process
 - toward your product
- toward you
 Objections are part of customers’ role
 Reciprocity – tell honestly what you get out of it
 Human need for:
- consistency
- simplicity
- feeling accepted
- feeling important
 We like people who:
- like us
- are like us

SELLERS’ SEVEN SINS

 Ignoring closing signals
 Confusing the customer
 Giving up too easily
 Not making incremental sales
 Impatience in need specification and in final stages of closing
 Talking about yourself
 Not listening and acting accordingly
Characteristics of modern selling
- Customer retention and deletion
- Database and knowledge management
- Customer relationship management
- Marketing the product
- Problem solving and system selling
- Satisfying needs and adding value

1. Order-takers – respond to already committed customers

2. Order-creators – do not directly receive orders since they talk to specifiers rather
than buyers
3. Order-getters – attempt to persuade customers to place an order directly

Order takers:

- inside order-takers – customer has full freedom to choose what he wants; seller’s
task is transactional – receiving payments and passing over the goods.
- delivery salespeople – seller is delivering the products
- outside order-takers – sellers visit customers; they need to respond to customer
request
Order-creators

- Missionary salespeople – (pharmacy); seller’s job is to persuade the customers to

specify the seller’s product

Order-getters – seller’s objective is to persuade customers to make a direct purchase. (the most
challenging)

 Front-line salespeople - new business salespeople; organisational salespeople;

consumer salespeople
 Sales support salespeople
- Technical support salespeople – seller needs to provide sales support to front-line
salespeople; seller may be supported by the product and financial specialists who
can provide the detailed technical information required by customer
- Merchandisers – sellers support in retail and wholesale selling situations.