Chapter 2

The Process of Selling and Buying

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Learning Objectives

• Recognize key drivers of change in selling

and sales management.
• Point out reasons why sales jobs can be
highly satisfying.
• Identify and explain key success factors for
salesperson performance.
 Learning Objectives

• Discuss and give examples of different

types of selling jobs.
• List and explain roles of participants in an
organizational buying center.
• Outline stages in organizational buyer
decision making.
• Point out the nature of different
organizational buying situations.
 Drivers of Change in Selling and
Sales Management (1)
• Building long-term relationships with
customers.
• Creating sales organizational structures that
are more nimble and adaptable to the needs
of different customer groups.
• Gaining greater job ownership and
commitment from salespeople.
 Drivers of Change in Selling and
Sales Management (2)
• Shifting sales management style from
commanding to coaching.
• Leveraging available technology for sales
success.
• Better integrating salesperson performance
evaluation.
• Understand the best practices in
selling
 What Customers Expect
1. Responsiveness to needs, problems; provides
service.
2. Knowledge of products and customer applications.
3. Customer advocacy; partnership development.
4. Ability to keep customer up-to-date.
5. Quality product/service.
6. Offer of technical support.
7. Offer of local or easily accessible representation.
8. Ability to provide a total solution.
9. Understanding of customer’s business.
10.Competitive price.
 How Sellers are Responding
• Establishing a customer-driven culture.
• Market segmentation.
• Market adaptability.
• Information technology.
• Customer feedback and measuring customer
satisfaction.
• Sales, service, and technical support systems.
• Recruiting and selecting salespeople.
• Training and development.
Attractiveness of Sales Careers
 Attractiveness of Sales Careers
• Autonomy and opportunities for personal
initiatives
– Freedom of action
– Personal initiative in deciding how to get
their job done
• A variety of challenging activities
– Boredom is seldom a problem
 Attractiveness of Sales Careers
• Financial rewards
– Intrinsic rewards (higher-order human
needs)
• feeling of accomplishment, self growth
– Extrinsic rewards(lower-order human
needs)
• pay, financial incentives, security,
recognition, promotion and rewards
 Attractiveness of Sales Careers
• Favorable working conditions
– Telecommute/ remote or virtual office
– work-family conflict?
• Excellent opportunities for development and
advancement
– Moving up in the organization
Disadvantages of Sales Careers
Exhibit 2.3 Possible career tracks for salespeople

Sales
Sales director
manager or VP

Sales Salesperso
trainee CEO
n

Marketin
Brand g
manager director
or VP
From Salesperson to CEO Exhibit 2.2

Here are five steps you can take to place

yourself in that swanky corner office:
• Understand the whole business
• Take an extra responsibilities
• Show you want it
• Gain self-awareness
• Network, network, network
 Key Success Factors in Selling
1. Listening skills
2. Follow-up skills
3. Ability to adapt sales style to situation/ adaptive
selling
4. Tenacity- sticking with a task
5. Well organized
6. Verbal communication skills
7. Able to interact with people at all levels of an
organization
8. Ability to overcome objections
9. Closing skills
10.Personal planning and time management skills
 Key Success Factors in Selling
1. Which of these factors are currently your
strongest points?
2. Which need the most work?
 Selling Activities
Servicing Servicing the
Selling Working Managing
the account
function with others information
product
Attending Training
conferences and Entertaining
Traveling Distribution
and recruiting
meetings
 Service calls
5%
Waiting / traveling
32% Prospectin
g
14%

With
customers
Administrative tasks 15%
34%
 Types of Selling Jobs
• Most salespeople are involved in retail selling –
selling goods and services to ultimate
consumers (B2C)
• A much larger volume of sales is accounted for
by industrial selling, recently referred to as
business-to-business selling (B2B):
– Sales to resellers
– Sales to business users
– Sales to institutions
 Stages in the Selling Process (Exhibit 2.8)

Prospectin
g for
Customers Opening
the
Relationshi
p Qualifying
the
Prospect Presentin
g the
Sales
Message Servicing
Closing
the
the Sale
Account

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSyQkYgYd20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF0q8y9R__Y
Participants in the
Buying Process
 Participants in the Buying Process (1)

• Initiators – perceive a problem or opportunity

requiring a new product of service
• Users –must use or work with the product or
service
• Influencers –provide information for evaluating
alternative products or suppliers
 Participants in the Buying Process (2)

• Gatekeepers – control the flow of information

to others
• Buyers – actually contact the selling
organization and place the order
• Deciders – final authority to purchase
• Controllers – determine the budget
Organizational Buying Decision Stages

1. Anticipate or recognize a problem or need

2. Determine and describe the traits and
quality needed
3. Search for and qualify potential suppliers
4. Acquire and analyze proposals/bids
5. Evaluate proposals and select suppliers
6. Select an order routine
7. Perform evaluation and give feedback
 Organizational Buying Situations

• New-task purchase – first-time purchase of a

complex and expensive product or service
• Modified rebuy – requires some modification
to existing purchase decision and may open
the door for new suppliers
• Straight rebuy – reorder an item purchased
many times in the past