Sales Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople - Speech or Presentation Example

Presentation Ladies and gentle, welcome to today’s presentation. It shall be focused on the sales and marketing career as it relates to the United Kingdom market. The requirements for the sales and marketing career shall be outlined followed by the various skills and levels of experience required that would make one successful in this career. One needs to have a career in a business course related to sales and marketing. Besides this, a skill in another field comes in as an added advantage. One’s natural talents also make them suited to this career especially those relating to people. The United Kingdom market is a dynamic one and requires the sales and marketing professional to have a diverse set of skills to succeed. In conclusion, it is requisite of the sales and marketing candidate to have an open mind and flexibility as required by the market dynamics. Any questions are welcome from the audience at this moment. Otherwise, thank you for your attention. Sales and Marketing Introduction For any company, the sole purpose of its product or service is to generate income. Whatever purpose the income is generated for does not matter. And if it does matter, it is not as important as the process of income generation. Given that very few companies exist in a monopoly market, competition is the order of the day. Every company aims at making the consumers believe that its product or service is the best suited to their needs. Product differentiation to suit specific markets has also been introduced all in the effort of gaining the upper hand in competition. While the company is reliant on sales, marketing comes across as an aspect that can never be ignored. If this happens, the company becomes vulnerable to market cannibalism where a competitor ‘eats’ into another company’s market share. All these are left to the sales and marketing department. Originally different departments, the changes in consumer preferences necessitated the amalgamation of the two departments. In this paper, several aspects of sales and marketing shall be enumerated and expounded upon. The experience and skills required for one to be successful pursuing a career in this view shall be outlined with a focus on succeeding in this very competitive field. Qualifications Many universities and institutions of higher learning offer courses in sales and marketing and related courses such as advertising, business administration, public relations, graphic design and communications. There are courses from the certificate level through the diploma level, the degree level, the master’s degree level all the way to the PhD level. As it is with any other job opportunity, those with a higher educational level have an upper hand when it comes to obtaining the job. It is thus advisable that one aims for the highest level of education to secure chances in a sales and marketing career. Another degree in a specific area such as engineering, accounting, creative writing or science comes as an added advantage to any job seeker. Language barrier has been identified as one of the problems sales and marketing individuals face. This thus necessitates the need for fluency in a language. A second language gives the individual an upper hand in job seeking. These requirements are asked for in companies such as SHS Sales and Marketing, JTG Consulting and Gateway Sales & Marketing. In JTG, for example, a degree in sales and marketing is a must for anyone with dreams of working for the company. One’s personal qualities determine the level to which an aspirant in the sales and marketing industry goes. It is requisite of every sales and marketing personality to exude confidence in whatever they are presenting. They need to be decisive to make solid resolutions that shall convince the second party to get along with the deal. The skills in solving problems are also an important aspect of this job description. Human beings are dynamic individuals that change with every turn of events. Adaptability aided by one’s dynamic character serve the sales and marketing executive well. In many cases, one has to be focused and quick in making the right decisions to quell the fears generated by pricing disputes, product design shortcomings, deadlines that are overdue and misprints in advertising. All these problems have legal consequences and should be averted with the least of these. Creativity and self-drive are priceless in this field and they literally drive the product market. The skills that are most valued in this field include data analysis and making presentations. Other skills such as money management, website building, survey administering, and graphic design serve the sales and marketing individual well. Social skills meant at instilling order into people are also invaluable mostly among the highly ranking company officials. Generally, having order and method in one’s work makes them achieve more from their efforts. Deep understandings of the way customers think in relation to a given product or service is among the most important skills in sales and marketing. It thus follows that one’s demeanor and personality should be as pleasant to the customers as possible. Teamwork is inevitable in sales and marketing. One should thus have as many skills in this field as possible to be at per with the rest of his team mates. Sales After years of research into the area of sales, researchers have come up with several ways in which sales are made. Most of these ways encompass an interaction between the customer and the sales representative with the latter being labored with the task of convincing the former into sealing a deal. For direct sales which involve a person to person situation, the sales representative needs a lot of solid social skills to have any chances of seeing the contract through. Most of such contracts are big-time deals involving companies. They are time-bound and require that the executive delivers exactly what they promised and, most importantly, on time. Under this type of sales are the business-to-business types of sales which specifically involve deals between companies. Other types of sales include pro forma sales, agency-based sales, traveling salesman, and requests for proposals. Sales and Marketing All those in serious pursuit of a career sales and marketing should be aware of the fact that this name consists of two branches of business that are many differences and were considered differently until recently. The reason for the amalgamation has been that they both serve the same purpose. Selling comes as the last element in the process of marketing and thus comes as a subsidiary of marketing. While this is true, one should understand that, however effective the other stages of marketing are, selling is the most important one since it completes the process. Business graduates should understand that the main aim of the sales and marketing department is to increase the value of the market in the eyes of end consumers. Another aim is to increase the number of interactions between the company and the end consumer. The latter reason is responsible for the number of sales any company would realize since human beings make a majority of their decisions basing on the familiarity of a given situation. The number of interactions relies heavily on the promotional techniques that shall be employed by the given company. Such include sales promotions, publicity events, advertising in general, and the creation and cementing of public relations. Other interactions with the public include the familiarization of the customer with the company through the company’s website and the use of social media. Business graduates are thus expected to have as many skills aimed at breaking the natural barrier between the customer and themselves upon assuming the position of sales and marketing executives. Sales process engineering considers sales to be the final stage and the result of an integrated system. It does not classify sales as a product of one department. The whole company providing the products and services does therefore have many other parts that make the sales successful. A business graduate should thus be aware that, while their focus shall be on ensuring a successful sale, they need to possess skills required to integrate other functions of the company into the sales and marketing processes. The most successful of sales and marketing professionals know how to harness the other functions of the organizations to spur growth in sales as a final result. Integration skills to a sales and marketing professional are very important. These skills enable them to stay focused and pick only the important aspects of a given system that shall ensure success on many fronts. In many cases, it requires that the professional learns the workings of the company and the behavior of the customers to be able to streamline various processes with a focus on achieving higher sales volumes. Generally, the focus should be to aim for interdependence between departments as opposed to independence. Emerging trends point to companies having identical structures for their sales and marketing departments. In other companies, they are amalgamated to one department for better effectiveness. This has allowed companies to study the market trends and how to harness them to instill discipline and focus in its professionals while, at the same time, ensuring progress as required. Business graduates should thus brace themselves with enough knowledge and skills to discern the differences between the sales department on one hand, and the marketing department on the other. This would help them appreciate the similarities between them and how to best use them to increase sales volumes. It should be known that sales departments should majorly focus on the increase of customers with the company and know the exact processes of the sales process in general. This knowledge is important since it allows the company to equip its professionals with the right skills to avoid (or handle) any problems that may emerge. A major pitfall for marketing executives which ambitious business graduates should be aware of is that they tend to lose focus as far as the goals of the sales departments are concerned. What should be known is the fact that the marketing department tends to increase the company costs without aligning that with the sales volumes. The sales department, on the other hand, generates income for the company as a result of the efforts of the marketing departments. This could easily be cause for conflict in any company that has failed to draw specific guidelines as to how its departments should integrate with others. Even to the companies that have amalgamated the two departments, it is usually an uphill task getting the two sub-departments on the same page. Business graduates with a passion for sales and marketing should thus have the necessary skills needed to ensure that there is as much integration between the sales and marketing departments as possible. Emerging Trends One trend most easily observable is that of conjoining the sales and marketing departments. As stated above, this is as a result of years of research with the results that the two departments are better off together than apart. This has several advantages to the company the most notable of which is that it reduces the conflicts between the departments. Secondly, it reduces the costs usually incurred in running two different departments focused on the same goal. In “The Profit Maximization Paradox”, Glen Petersen gives the opinion that marketing departments are often not in touch with customer needs as sales departments lack receptiveness to market trends. Integration has improved on this pitfalls and enabled companies to “kill two birds with a single stone.” Another trend has been the need to eliminate the sales department given that the marketing one is responsible for a majority of the sales volumes generated. While this poses various problems for a given company, it is worth considering. Any business graduate should have this in their minds given that future companies could eliminate sales departments altogether. The graduates should thus diversify their skills to have a firm hold on both the sales and marketing areas to secure their jobs. The United Kingdom The United Kingdom is a diverse market and among the very complex in the world. Its business landscape is characterized by multinational corporations and vicious competition. Given that it is among the most flexible markets, growth in other business have various opportunities for the sales and marketing executive on one hand; and threats on the other. For one, many businesses are focusing on advertising to generate income and beat the competition. This means business graduates have more opportunities than ever. On the contrary, more and more firms are outsourcing marketing to outsiders whose main focus is marketing. This means the companies would need leaner sales and marketing workforces. I think any company should manage the wages and leisure time because it can play an integral part in business especially when it comes to boosting the image of a particular business. In the same line, the management may benefit on winning prospective employers interests. I think when the company controls the wages; it focuses on customer-oriented bureaucracy. In the end, if employee’s wages are well managed, they end up helping their community and company. Conclusion In conclusion, anyone with a focus on a career in sales and marketing should be aware of the fact that it is among the most dynamic and competitive areas of business. While having a lot of revenues, very few individuals have personalities suited for it. Introverts and those lacking people skills should advisably avoid this career since it will greatly conflict with their personalities. Even though sales and marketing skills can be learned and mastered, care should be taken to avoid going to lengths that could have negative effects for the graduate. In summary, preparation for this career should be enough for the turmoil therein. Work cited Stephan Schiffman. The 25 Sales Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople. 57 Littlefield Street, Avon. Adams Media. Jun 1, 2008. Read More