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-Marketing & sales consultant to over 11 firms
-who has trained over 200 successful marketers/salespeople

• Plan a programme that will induce management to adequately remunerate the sales team.
  
• What do you do if your company is not providing the necessary things that will help you in achieving your goals?
  
• How do we market in a company that is into technical jobs (repairs) apart from creating awareness?
  
• What do you do when a person tries to harass you or embarrass you anyhow? Do you walk out and forgo such person or do you continue in another form?
  
• do you have training or teaching on representative? I mean, if I am a company rep of a foreign firm.
  
• I work in an automobile firm - best selling in the world. But the problem I have is that I make more calls and in most cases I get few results. How can I improve on this?
  
• How do you handle tough clients and throw more light on the issue of pricing where you have competition around your customer satisfaction.
  
• How do we get more materials for regular reference?
  

By my experience and assessment over the years, no remuneration can be said to be adequate for a professional sales person. That is why most organizations make provisions for commissions, overriding, bonuses, etc. This seems fair enough because if a marketer is only remunerated with static salary/wages, he will feel cheated when he overshoots his performance targets. On the other hand the company loses money when the marketer under-performs.

I suggest the following to increase your income.

1. Start by drawing up a goal of what income you want to earn between now and the end of the year (in commissions)
2. Decide how many sales (of cars) you need to make on a monthly basis in order to reach that income target.
3. Use the prospecting target in the ADVANCED SELLING SKILLS reference manual to improve your prospecting skills and set a personal activity goal of meeting at least 5 prospects per day.
4. Be consistent and persistent in your activities and make a self-appraisal and review every week and every month. Do not give up due to short-term disappointments.
5. If there are any other critical areas of sales you need improvement e.g. presenting, closing, follow-up, etc use the manual and/or call me for assistance.

I hope to see you at the top 10% in your sales shortly. Answers to other questions from the seminar would be published on our website from next month. Please check them out to see how you can gain from the answers given. Have a nice day.

What do you do if your company is not providing the necessary things that will help you in achieving your goals?

As humans, we should be goal-oriented, much more as marketers. I would not guess what “necessary things” you mean but I suppose the necessary things are the prospecting tools mentioned in the ADVANCED SELLING SKILLS reference manual. In addition, if you are paid salary and transport allowance, you do not have any other excuse. Sometimes, there may be official vehicles provided but if not you can still go marketing. I started selling on pure commissions and I’ve trained many successful marketers who had nothing else but commissions. On the other hand, I have come to realize that not every one has the mind to overcome every setback and succeed. So I recommend the following if you cannot meet your goals under your present circumstance.

1. Write or discuss the situation with your immediate boss, telling him your sales goals and asking for his support to accomplish them.
2. If the organization operates an open door system write to your employer if the first step did not produce desired result.
3. Start looking for another organization to work with if the first two does not workout well.

How do we market in a company that is into technical jobs (repairs) apart from creating awareness?

The principles designed in the training are conventional; hence they are applicable in any product or service. However, concerning your situation, you need to convert your operations into a working system/process. To do this you need to answer the following questions.

1. Do you have position for marketers and what is their remuneration?
2. What is the process for registering jobs? What time limit do you give for each category of repairs? Do you have competent/qualified technicians/engineers to handle jobs?
3. Do you have precautionary/legal framework in form of terms and conditions to protect you or your company against litigation and stolen systems?
4. Do you have working administrative and accounting systems? What is your vision as a company?
5. Are you a certified brand dealer? This can give you market edge. Do you have authority by your principal to respond/repair under their warrantee?

These and many other questions need to be satisfactorily answered in order to move to the next level in your sales.

I believe your use of the words “harass” and “embarrass “ means asking you out for date. In such situation you do not have to be harsh as many novices do. Your rejection must be polite because it is normal for a man to ask a woman out whether she is selling or not. You can say “Mr. Prospect, thank you for the opportunity but I cannot respond to that issue right now if you do not mind.   Let us conclude the business as that is the purpose I am here to see you” If he persists, you can say, “Mr. Prospect, suppose I am your sister or your daughter, would you be pleased to find out that I am going out with my customers? Or, If you were to be my employer, would you be happy sending me on prostitution in order to get you business?”

Oluchi, although some will insist on having affair with you as a condition for or before buying (you can walk away from these ones, politely) but still some would do business with you and respect you and even  refer you to their friends. I have seen a situation a marketer ended up getting married to her client – a respectable young man who never “harassed” her before buying. Today, they are in Europe. The man never approached her for date as a condition before the sale. But I know that she could have lost her husband if she was rude and snobbish.

do you have training or teaching on representative? I mean, if I am a company rep of a foreign firm.

I work in an automobile firm - best selling in the world. But the problem I have is that I make more calls and in most cases I get few results. How can I improve on this?

Remember that selling is hard work – even in the best economy with the best products. Also success in selling demands smart thinking, which does not replace hard work but compliments it. Also remember that selling is a game of numbers based on averages.  Your prospects always outstrip your sales by at least 25:1. this means that in the hardest economic situation, selling the toughest products, a new marketer in an industry should make a sale in not an average of 25 calls. If you are not new in your industry, 25 to 1 sale is a sign of defectiveness in some critical sales success techniques. Maybe you are not qualifying well. From your question I quickly see it’s either that you may be talking to the wrong people or that you need a better grasp of the law of averages. Hence I recommend the following: -

• Qualifying: You should ask and answer the question “who is my prospect”? “Who is the decision maker for the purchases?” etc. see the section on qualifying in the ADVANCED SELLING SKILLS reference manual.
• Presenting: (see ASS reference manual)
• Closing and follow-up (see as above)
• Intro to E-business: I met a salesperson in an auto dealership whose sales has increased significantly after he designed and started sending e-brochures containing pictures and prices of his vehicles to several hundreds of e-mails. You can do the same too. (See ASS)

How do you handle tough clients and throw more light on the issue of pricing where you have competition around your customer satisfaction.

1. Your question about “tough” client is not very specific. There are things the client is tough on; I suggest they include pricing as seen in the next phrase. Also concerning your competitor; is he selling the same brand of product at lower prices or selling another brand of product at competitive prices?. In either case, you can apply a strategy called differentiation. This is the ability to showcase yourself, your product and your company as different from another based on key features and benefits. Read more on market strategy in the ADVANCED SELLING SKILLS reference manual.