A Project Report on

Personal Selling

Under the Guidance of: Submitted By:

Prof. Joydeep Biswas Arijit Bardhan(18202015)

Sambit Ray(18202046)
Sameer Panigrahi(18202047)
Santanu Kumar Behera(18202050)
Satyajit Padhy(18202052)
Marzia Yousefi(18202292)
Section – A
PERSONAL SELLING
Personal selling is also known as face-to-face selling in which one person who is the salesman
tries to convince the customer in buying a product. It is a promotional method by which the
salesperson uses his or her skills and abilities in an attempt to make a sale.
Personal selling is an important marketing tool for small businesses, particularly those that sell
complex or high-value products and services to other businesses, rather than consumers.
Companies can undertake personal selling by hiring sales representatives who visit customers
or by contacting customers by telephone. Companies selling to consumers may find it
uneconomical to deal with individual customers, unless they are selling face-to-face in a mall,
marketing high-value products such as cars or selling products that require demonstration, such
as smart phones or computers.

THE SELLING PROCESS:

Prospecting

Pre-
Pre-sale approach
preparation before the
interview

Follow up Approach to
action the customer

Closing the Sales

Sale Presentation

Handling
Customer
Objections

Step 1: Presales Preparation:

The pre-sales procedure is the arrangement of exercises that is done before the client has been
gained. As a matter of first importance, it is significant for the sales and promoting faculty to
think about and see about their item or administration, its highlights, attributes just as points of
interest and utilization and so forth. At this stage, an activity to recognize potential zones and
fields or target clients rundown ought to be attracted up detail. In each distinguished client
section, further specifying of how the item could fit in and be helpful to the client should be
identified.
Step 2: Prospecting and Qualifying

Before planning a sale, a salesperson conducts research to identify the people or companies
that might be interested in her product. This step is called prospecting, and it’s the foundational
step for the rest of the sales process. A lead is a potential buyer. A prospect is a lead that is
qualified or determined to be ready, willing, and able to buy.

It is much more fruitful to invest time with a qualified prospect, one who has the desire or
ability to buy the product or service. The definition of sales prospecting is when inside sales
reps make outbound calls or send outbound emails to leads in hopes of creating opportunities
for account executives. Prospecting can involve cold-calling as well as reaching out to nurture
leads that have gone cold. In our case we didn’t follow the formal process of prospecting as it
is tangible and goods can be presented in front of eyes and limitation of stocks. Instead we used
these steps:
i. Targeting
ii. Value in Every Touch
iii. The Right Offer
iv. No Tricks

Step 3: Pre-approach
The pre-approach is the “doing homework” part of the process. A good salesperson researches
his prospect, familiarizing himself with the customer’s needs and learning all the relevant
background info he can about the individual or business.

Step 4: Approach
Early introductions (e.g., the initial couple of minutes of a sales call) are significant to building
the customer's trust. As an expert salesperson, one would never make a pitch immediately;
rather, one would work to set up an affinity with the client first. This normally includes
presentations, making some casual conversation, asking a couple of warm-up inquiries, and by
and large clarifying what your identity is and whom you speak to.

Step 5: Presentation
There's a decent arrangement of planning required before a salesperson ever makes her pitch
or introduction, however the introduction is the place the exploration satisfies and her thought
for the prospect wakes up. The introduction ought to be custom-made to the client, clarifying
how the item addresses that individual's issues. It may include an item exhibit, tests, or letting
the client really take a gander at or collaborate with the item. Now, the client is utilizing the
data that is being shared as a major aspect of his assessment of potential arrangements.

Step 6: Handling Objections

After we have made your sales presentation, it’s natural for our customer to have some
hesitations or concerns called objections. Good salespeople look at objections
as opportunities to further understand and respond to customers. Ste
Step 7: Closing the Sale
Eventually, if our customer is convinced your product will meet her needs, we close by
agreeing on the terms of the sale and finishing up the transaction. This is the point where the
customer decides to purchase our products.

Step 8: Following Up
The follow-up is an important part of assuring customer satisfaction, retaining customers, and
prospecting for new customers. This might mean sending a thank-you note, calling the
customer to make sure a product was received in satisfactory condition, or checking in to make
sure a service is meeting the customer’s expectations.

PROCEDURE APPLIED FOR SALES

1. SELLING FOUNDATION
a. Pre-sale preparation:
As a matter of first importance, it is significant for the sales and advertising work force to
ponder and see about their item or administration, its highlights, qualities just as preferences
and utilization and so forth. At this stage, an activity to distinguish potential territories and
fields or target clients rundown ought to be attracted up detail. In each recognized client section,
further specifying of how the item could fit in and be valuable to the client should be counted.
Every individual's requirement for item would be extraordinary.
We needed to get our work done well to see increasingly about every one's way of life,
socioeconomics and other financial just as social factors that could impact their requirement
for and choice for protection, in this way preparing our self to have the option to work with the
people and prompt them on the most proficient method to approach making arrangements for
their needs as opposed to simply selling an item.

The next step in the homework would be to study competition and prepare a detailed chart
comparing the competition product visa vise the product that is being proposed. We should
know all about the competitor’s products as well. We should be in a position to discuss
meaningfully with the customers about his product and compare it with the competition and
bring out the advantages or disadvantages of choosing a particular product from the customer’s
perspective. A customer who finds a salesman discussing objectively about competition and
keeping the customer’s interest at heart will appreciate the sincerity of the salesman and is
likely to trust our advice.
Handwash Utensil Wash
Kalinga Handwash Kalinga
Dettol Vim
Patanjali Exo
Palmolive Pril
Phenyl Floor Cleaner
Nirmayl Lizol
Phynyl Reliance Mopz
Kalinga Phenyl Domex
 Kalinga Vehicle Wash Liquid detergent
Ezee(1ltr)
Ujala Comfort
Kalinga(3/4) Kalinga

The product tree of Kalinga Chemicals are as follows:

There are also cases where we had advised customers on choosing a particular competitor’s
product to suit the customer’s needs. While one may be surprised, it is actually a very genuine
right thought and action on the part of the true salesman. Any professional and confident
salesman will always place customer relationship and customer’s needs above everything else.

When the product is not suitable for the customer, we would rather become an advisor or sort
of consultant to the customer and guide him/her on choosing the next best alternative. Thereby
one gets to build a relationship with the customer and wait for future opportunities rather than
give up on the customer. The sign of a good salesman is that he/she would look at losing out
on one transaction in order to gain a lifetime relationship with the customer.
2. UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER VALUE
a. Prospecting:

The first step in sales process is to identify the prospects.

A prospect is a potential customer that has been qualified as fitting certain criteria. In most
cases, a prospect:
 Comes in the target market
 Has the means (money) to buy
 Is authorized to make buying decisions

Prospects don't must have shown an enthusiasm for purchasing. They simply need to meet the
above criteria. Deciding the correct prospect is significant in the sales procedure in such a case
that we select an inappropriate prospects we wind up sitting around idly on the sales procedure
in light of the fact that there is no need of the item or administration.
We decided our prospects based on targeting on and Segmenting. As the items are FMCG
items, there are heaps of set up brand effectively present in the market. We portioned our clients
based on pay, age, Occupation and so on. As these items costs not exactly the item those are
accessible in the market, so we primarily focused on understudies, center Income bunch and so
on. We additionally focused on the households(females) as they are now aware of the item, so
it was an additional favorable position.

The second step is to search for source of potential account. In this step the marketers need to
understand the mindset of the customer and try to find whether there is a latent need or not.
In order to find potential customers one first have to find out as much as one can about who
really has a use or need for y products or services. That would include age, interests,
occupation, region or location and any other demographics that may apply to you.The potential
of the customer should be determined by asking questions about his likes and dislikes. The
goal is to determine if the lead is a good candidate for what we offer (target market), and has
the money and ability to buy.
In this, we asked the customers about their likes and dislikes and how much they are they
willing to pay for these products and what are the current products they are using.
The third step is Lead Generation. A lead usually is the contact information and in some cases,
demographic information of a customer who is interested in a specific product or service. There
are two types of leads in the lead generation market: sales leads and marketing leads.
Once we have determined that the lead could be a prospect (fits at least one criterion), we need
the work to qualify them under the other criteria. This can be done in a variety of ways,
including a phone call, in person meeting, online form, email, etc. We preferred to go for in
person meeting as it’s a new product and it will have more impact in face-to-face conversation.
Suspect can be anyone in the universe who could perhaps buy our offer. We do not even know
if a suspect is interested to your market. It can be an individual or organization with a potential
need for your service or product. But it is not necessary that the suspect will always buy the
product. So we need to distinguish properly between the suspect and Prospect .A prospect is
an individual or organization that is a possible customer to buy your product and has gone
through a qualification process. A prospect who is interested will engage with you consistently,
while a suspect will only engage with you as long as it’s safe. In this step, we distinguish the
prospects from the leads. The customers who are really interested in buying the product or
service are segregated from the customers who have the ability to buy the product. This is the
most crucial step as these customers bring business to the company. So their needs and wants
should be taken care of.
In the last step, we differentiated the prospects from the suspects by evaluating the responses
of them that we gathered through cold calling and then tried to pitch the products to these
customers. This is in B2B scenarios. Also we made sure that we don’t invest much time and
focus on suspects as time is also very important factor in sales.
b. Pre- Approach Before The Interview:
The stage of the selling process that consists of customer research and goal planning for the
presentation. The pre-approach may be defined as obtaining as much relevant information as
possible regarding the prospect prior to making a sales presentation. The knowledge gained
during the pre-approach allows the tailoring of the sales presentation to the particular prospect.
This step overlapped little bit with presales preparation. To make a tweaked introduction and
sales pitch, we invested our energy in characterizing objectives, inquiring about the customer's
needs and issues, anticipating what data the customer needs before purchasing the advertising.
We concluded that we should inquire as to whether the item address' the client's issues, if the
client has the accounts to make a buy.

Through cautious arranging, we had the option to concentrate on significant client needs and
convey the important advantages to the purchaser, address potential issue zones before the sales
introduction, and appreciated the fearlessness that emerges, after exhaustive readiness.
c. Approach
The approaches which we tried and applied during our assignment was:
1. Question Approach
2. Customer Benefits approach
3. Social Benefits/Emotional-selling approach

Question Approach:
Our aim was to meet with a prospect (stranger/ known) and in a limited amount of time
convince them to reach into their pocket and hand us money. So, it’s very important to ask
questions to the customers, as it will indirectly give insight into customers’ mindset.

Advantage of asking questions:

 It helped us to provide smooth customer experience
 It allowed us to get into your customer shoes (understand customer journey better)
 It gave us meaningful data that can be used to make better decisions

Broad, open-ended sales questions helped us to find out what the customers want and to
identify what's going on in our prospects' and clients' worlds. They are essential to sales
success. In fact, "listened to me" and "understood my needs" are two of the top factors.
Sales questions also helped us to get connected with buyers personally, understand what's
important to them, reshape their thinking, and create better futures for them. The importance
of asking the right sales questions cannot be understated.
Some times people they need help to find the right solution. That’s where the salesperson
comes in. When we know what they need, it’s easier for us to make them believe that products
from Kalinga are going to meet their demands and needs successfully.
Sales questions have a place in every part of the sales process.

We asked questions in every stage of the sales process.

 In the warm-up, we used sales questions to get the prospect to relax and open up.
 In the need analysis, open-ended sales questions lead them explain their challenges.
 In the demonstration, alternate of choice sales questions to make sure they see value in
each of the benefits we offer.
 In the pre-close we used tie-down sales questions as test closes

Customer Benefit Approach – What will they get out of it?

It is very important to constantly feel the prospect about the attributes that the product has, how
it is going to solve the problems that they are facing currently, how it is better than other
products available in markets.

Sometimes it was difficult to make the people understand the value this brand and product is
going to provide, and most of them saw benefit in terms of:
 Price
 Effectiveness
 Longevity
 Multipurpose usage
  Smell
 Variety
Introductory approach was helpful when we went outside KIIT area, as KIIT University has
strong brand name so it made our task easier to make the people interested in what we are
selling and they listened to us.

Social Benefits/Emotional-selling approach

It is a derived form of customer benefit approach in our case. Because the learnings we got
from our first 4-5 sales calls, encouraged us to approach our upcoming prospects by explaining
them in detail about the following aspects.
Hence, we have started highlighting the backdrops such as:
1. Promotor of Swatch bharat campaign
2. Encouraging young entreprenuers
3. Welcoming usage of Made in India products
4. Helping, young tribal kids as the profits are going directly to them

By, putting all these into a single package, we designed a packet termed, “Package of Smile”
and sold the boxes containing all 9 products(one from each) and went for selling as a bundled
unit, instead of going single ones.
In our case the Emotional selling approach really worked and customer benefits approach
failed.
3. COMMUNICATING AND DELIVERING CUSTOMER VALUE

a. Sales presentation techniques:

The sales presentation technique, which we used, are The Elevator Pitch, The Written sales
presentation (Through E-mail) and Problem solving sales presentation.
Most of the initial sales calls, we have faced were in Elevator pitch approach, where we had to
present our product in front of a customer with a very short duration of 2 minutes max. In this
method the success ratio was 60:40 to start with.
Later on we have applied our innovative approach of attracting people who actively take part
in social activities and have a keen interest towards promoting social campaigns. Hence, we
started promoting our “Package of Smile” campaign through E-mail from the eve of
Independence day.
After getting the responses & curiosity of few interested people, we fixed appointment with
them, pitched our products in front of them, and got good results in the success ratio rate of
80:20.
b. Handling Customer Objections:
Objection handling means reacting to the purchaser such that alters their perspective or mitigate
their worries.
The objections we faced are:
 It’s not required now
 It’s too expensive
 We’re happy the way things are
 I’ve never heard of your company
 We don’t have money now
 I can get cheaper version some where else
 Buyer isn’t convinced
 I don’t see any benefits in your product
 Your product sounds good, may be next time

I can get a cheaper version of your product somewhere else

We need to discover what we are managing here. The item we are managing are in focused
circumstance, and the greater part of cases prospect was playing, against a contender to drive
up limits.
To deal with this circumstance we handled out our most profound markdown and accentuated
the highlights that make our item unrivaled. In the subsequent situation, we exploited the
correlation. What are the purposes of separation that give our prospect the most worth? Played
them up and underline in general worth, not cost.

I’m happy with (Competitor’s product)

What if our prospect is happy? The same strategy still applies – we fond out why they believe
their relationship with our competitor is beneficial, and identified weak spots where our product
could do better.

It’s too expensive or We don’t have money now

Value protests are the most widely recognized sort of complaint, and are even voiced by those
prospects who have each goal of purchasing. In any case, we knew that the minute we began
concentrating on cost as a selling point, we may diminish our self to a value-based agent.
Rather, we hovered back to the item's worth.

I've never known about your organization

We faced this question objection a lot, as Kalinga products are not in market it’s for internal
purpose only and production factory is located one place only. So it was hard to convince the
customer about the brand image, still we had a sound backup that KISS student’s effort they
put in making those products and why it can’t be produced more.
We treated this objection as a request for information. We didn’t give an elevator pitch, but
provide a very quick summary of our value proposition.
I don’t see what your product could do for me
Another request for information packaged as an objection. We reconfirm the goals or
challenges and explained how our product can solve their specific problems.

c. Sales Closure

Traditional sales closing techniques usually employ some psychological tricks designed to give
that final nudge.

The assumptive close:

This technique involves using a phrase or language that assumes the close is a done deal. For
example, you could close with, “What day do you want to receive your shipment?”

The option close:

Similar to the assumptive close, rather than asking for a prospect’s business directly, you ask
them which option they prefer. For example, you could close with, “Do you want your
shipment delivered on Wednesday or Friday?”

The suggestion close:

If you have good rapport with the prospect and they view you as a trusted expert, a suggestion
close is a good approach. You could close with, “Based on what you have told me about your
operations, I would suggest you receive orders on Fridays. Does this work for you?”

The urgency close:

Creating a sense of urgency places pressure on the prospect to make a decision, especially if
you have identified that the client needs to make a decision quickly and is working on a short
timeline. Think of the “limited time offer” as an example. However, unlike other closing
techniques, this should only be used occasionally and by experienced sales reps who have a
strong relationship with a client.

In most of the sales calls we have attended, we have applied option close and assumptive close
approach and in very few cases we have applied urgency close techniques.

4-INCREASING CUSTOMER VALUE

Follow Up
Following up on deals is a basic advance in structure and keeping up long haul associations
with new clients. It includes a basic correspondence exertion to perceive how the client is
getting along and whether he has any issues with or inquiries regarding the new item or
administration. Alongside demonstrating you give it a second thought, follow-ups help identify
fixable issues. Without follow-up, sales reps may never find out about a portion of the more
typical reasons clients never return.
In this process, we have followed up the customers through E-mail and few customers have
referred us to approach others also.
OVERALL SALES ANALYSIS (QUANTITATIVE)

For this assignment purpose the products which we have received from the assigner were as
follows:
Item MRP (Rs) Purchase Price (Rs) Quantity Taken(Nos.)
Utensil Wash (Spray) 75 35 15
Utensil Wash 60 30 15
Hand wash (Spray) 75 50 15
Hand wash 65 40 15
Floor cleaner 60 30 15
Ujala 40 25 15
Phenyl 65 40 15
Vehicle Wash 30 20 15
Ezee 40 30 15
Total 510 300 135(15 sets)

Product arrangement and pricing:

One product set, “PoS” (Package of Smile) contains one product from each available category.
So, we had 15 units of PoS.
Cost Price of PoS = Rs. 300/- per package
MRP of PoS = Rs. 510/- per package
MRP of all top competitors (One product from each category in aggregate) = Rs. 650/-(Approx)
MRP of all bottom competitors including local players (One product from each category in
aggregate) = Rs. 380/-(Approx)
Price at which we provided to the customer = 420/- per package
Profit per package = (Rs. 420 – Rs.300) = Rs. 120/- per package
Profit Margin = 40%

CONCLUSION

The business procedure was extraordinary and we taken in a great deal from it. It showed us
different aptitudes more often than not dealing with dismissals. In deals beginning days we
confronted dismissal a ton and the entire day turned sour, later we understood that that wasn't
the part of the bargain. In deals one can't be tragic looking or eager so being patient in taking
care of client's inquiries and protests and foreseeing how they will respond.
In sales everything was unconstrained and off the cuff, so the spots we figured we can't make
deals were the spots we sold most extreme items.
Key Learnings:

 Learnt and Used the advantages of 4P's of Marketing

 We figured out how to converse with outsiders
 We figured out how to pose inquiry
 We figured out how to take notes without looking away
 We figured out how to manage dismissal
 We found out about prioritization
 We Learnt about morals
 Managing Rejection
 The most effective method to convince without being irritating or pushy
 Underestimation of Product amount
 Listen more than you talk