Used X / Performance indicators for BSM
2 / Adjust to change
  • Globalization and technology continually change the dynamic of work environments and the business cycle at large
  • In order to succeed as a business, workers must learn to adjust to these changes
Once a company adopts philosophies, procedures, and protocols reflective of a change, employees, in this case sales associates, need to be trained to provide consistent service that accurately represents the views of the company as a whole rather than individual biases.
Analyze customer needs
2 / Analyze employer expectations in a business environment
Employer expectations are communicated in the job description and in detail through the job training process. They form the basis of performance evaluations which may be used to determine performance bonuses and/or promotions. Both the employer and employee are responsible for ensuring communication of these expectations are clear and understood so they can rely on each other to achieve common goals. Expectations may include professional development for employees to upgrade and stay on top of the latest trends in the industry
Did the participant explain their expectations of their employees in terms of:
  • Job performance
  • Customer service
  • Professionalism
  • Ability to handle conflict
  • To be on the job as required
  • To be punctual
  • To be reliable
  • To be honest and ethical
  • To take initiative

2 / Analyze the impact of specialization/division of labor on productivity.
Analyze the impact of technology on marketing
Several technologies have an impact on marketing including the Internet, mobile phones, social media, and customer relationship management systems. Some key factors of this impact include:
  • Consumers can access more information about products and services on their own
  • Consumer expectations are high
  • Consumers can engage with organizations and their brands through a variety of devices and channels
  • Organizations must coordinate their marketing efforts across multiple channels
  • Organizations must leverage data from customer relationship management software and other sources of analytics to drive their marketing efforts
  • Technology has introduced new media channels to marketers
  • Television advertising has less impact than it used to
  • Consumer has greater choice in what is viewed, when it is viewed and how it is viewed
  • Technology has made distribution simpler. Internet allows much greater reach with lower costs
  • Marketers must have a social media strategy (Facebook, Twitter...)
Participants should be able to demonstrate some of the significant impacts that technology has had in marketing and particularly as they apply to this situation. The participant’s address may include:
  • Technology has created many new marketing strategies for goods and services
  • Customer relationship management (CRM) involves finding customers and keeping them satisfied through a variety of means – database marketing – creating and maintaining customer lists – with technology these can be created with e-mail, on-line purchases, and web site visits – also on-line customer surveys
  • The internet has increased a marketer’s ability to measure effectiveness, track customer buying behaviour, conduct research and manage data
  • Market research can use technology to automate telephone research and provide interactive focus groups online
  • Technology has provided new platforms for distribution and collection of information – on-line sales; Internet: social media; delivery of sales and promotions via smart phones

Apply active listening skills.
Ask relevant questions.
2 / Assess personal interests and skills needed for success in business
  • An important part of attracting the right talent for a job is job analysis – a detailed study of the specific duties in a particular job and the human qualities required for that job
  • These specific interests and skills desired in a candidate must be communicated through the job description such that applicants can fairly assess whether or not their interests and skills are best suited for the role
  • The HR representatives, through the hiring process, can then do the same assessment for each candidate who applies and qualifies for an interview based on the qualities represented in their resumes
  • This allows for careful recruitment of qualified, interested, and motivated individuals who are prepared to commit to a positive work environment
  • As the business grows, job descriptions may change along with the skills needed to perform.
  • Professional development opportunities (i.e. technical courses, training programs, etc.) must be provided to encourage employees to improve themselves and keep up with the evolution of the industry.

Assess the services of professional organizations in marketing.
2 / Collect marketing information from others.
Communicate core values of product/service
2 / Coordinate activities in the promotional mix
The four elements of the promotional mix are: advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling. All elements used should be coordinated to achieve the company’s goals. All initiatives should be coordinated to target the identified markets, clearly communicate the same underlying message.
  • Advertising includes any paid presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor (Ex. Print ads, radio, television, billboards etc) Place advertisements that would appear locally promoting the award-winning coffee in newspapers, direct mail, posters/billboards Recognize that TV ads would be created for national chain by the national chain itself
  • Sales promotions Incentives designed to stimulate the purchase or sale of a product (Ex. Coupons, sweepstakes, contests, rebates etc. Offer sample coffee taste cups at popular local events and venues) . Sales promotion includes media and non-media marketing communication in order to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability
  • Public relations includes paid intimate stimulation of supply for a product, service or business unit by planting significant news about it or a favourable presentation in the media and sometimes include direct marketing and sponsorship Contact newspapers and radio stations to come review or feature the restaurant or Sponsor local events
  • Personal Selling is a process of helping and persuading one or more prospects to purchase a good or service or to act on any idea through the use of an oral presentation (Ex. Sales presentations, sales meetings, sales training) Each waiter should up sell by recommending products, especially our award-winning coffee
Participants should describe a variety of creative ideas that address all areas of concern.
Coordinate distribution with other marketing activities
Brands carry out online and offline advertising on behalf of channel partners to aid them in generating sales of their branded products. Those online and offline marketing initiatives can either be isolated or coordinated to inform one another.
An example of this is an apple orchard: Apple orchard > Transport > Processing factory > Packaging > Final product to be sold > Apple pie eaten Apples are not advertised as much in winter and spring. They are harvested in Fall.
An alternative term is distribution channel or 'route-to-market'. It is a 'path' or 'pipeline' through which goods and services flow in one direction (from vendor to the consumer), and the payments generated by them flow in the opposite direction (from consumer to the vendor). A marketing channel can be as short as being direct from the vendor to the consumer or may include several inter-connected (usually independent but mutually dependent) intermediaries such as wholesalers, distributors, agents, retailers. Each intermediary receives the item at one pricing point and moves it to the next higher pricing point until it reaches the final buyer.
Marketing Channels can be long term or short term.
Short term channels are influenced by market factors such as: business users, geographically concentrated, extensive technical knowledge and regular servicing required, and large orders. Short term product are influenced by factors such as: perishable, complex, and expensive. Short term producer factors include whether the manufacturer has adequate resources to perform channel functions, Broad product line, and channel control is important. Short term competitive factors include: manufacturing feels satisfied with marketing intermediaries' performance in promoting products.
Long term market factors include consumers, geographically dispersed, little technical knowledge and regular servicing is not required, and small orders. Product factors for long term marketing channels are: durable, standardized, and inexpensive. Producer factors are manufacturer lacks adequate resources to perform channel functions, limited product line, and channel control not important. The competitive factors are: manufacturer feels dissatisfied with marketing intermediaries' performance in promoting products
2 / Create promotional signs
2 / Defend ideas objectively
  • Support ideas with facts
  • Leave opinion and emotion out
  • Be conscious of tone of voice
  • The company must answer complaints quickly and to the customer’s satisfaction
The participant may indicate defending ideas objectively:
  • Supporting their ideas and answers with facts and business terminology
  • Answer questions effectively and in detail.

3 / Demonstrate a customer service mindset
A service mindset is an outlook that focuses on creating customer value, loyalty and trust. A business with this outlook wants to go beyond simply providing a product or service. It wants to create a positive and indelible imprint in the customer's, or even in the prospect's mind. To do this, a business has to care about the customer or prospect experience and work continuously at enhancing it
  • Listen carefully to the customer’s complaint and acknowledge that you are there to help—in this case that the business meeting has been disrupted
  • Explain that you appreciate and value the business that the customer has given you and that you would like the relationship to continue
  • Provide customer surveys to get feedback from the customers. This could be done by a card with the bill, a website address or a phone call to important customers. There could be an incentive such as a discount or free dessert if they fill out the survey
  • Use interpersonal skills to handle customer requests and questions, Understand management’s role in customer relations, understand procedures for handling difficult customers, explain business policies to customers and handle customer complaints.
  • you should view negative customer interactions as opportunities to learn even more about the customers’ needs and expectations

4 / Demonstrate appropriate creativity
Creativity in the workplace is the next step up from problem solving. It is a real asset to employers hunters, if they can show how they bring additional value to the employer, and preferably prove a dollar value to that creativity. Initiative and good ideas are now much more appreciated than they were in the old hierarchical corporate jobs. Ideas are valuable, and so are employees who can get more value out of the endless possibilities of new systems.
Some people actually make much more of a career out of ideas, rather than just doing a job. The opportunities are always there. Everybody, on any job, soon figures out a better way of getting things done.
Most value adding is about dealing with volumes of work. Just as well, too, because that's how efficiency is achieved. It's a natural use of skills to make work easier and more productive. That's also why many people who are quite efficient in organizing their own work don't even recognize why they're efficient. They think it's common sense, but it's actually part of the creativity in the workplace effect. Think about how you've organized your own work to suit your own needs. There will be something. You may not have redesigned the whole workplace, but you will have done something to make yourself work more efficiently.
Now comes the rest of the question, how to show value in your creativity.
Work value is measured by:
  • Profit
  • Savings
  • Improved time frames
  • Increased efficiency in your own work
  • Increased efficiency which carries through up the work chain to others from your own work
This is what is meant by improving productivity. It's productive in that it generates income, saves time and therefore money, and improves the efficiency of yourself and others. In whatever sense it's done, it's valuable to the employer.
So you have to express the value of your creativity in those terms, to the judges, and show them why it's valuable. If you've come up with a better way of doing things, or a more efficient or obviously quicker way of doing your work, you've answered the question effectively, and made your point.As with all interview questions, you must structure your answer so the interviewers can see the processes involved, and the value of your work.
In this case, creativity is a very broad range of possible subjects, but you can simplify and clarify your answer:
  • Explain the work, and the processes.
  • Explain your idea and its benefits in terms of the productivity criteria.
Tell the judges what you've achieved with your creativity. Also tell them your manager or supervisor's reaction to your work if you can tell them about a positive response from them. That's proof of achievement.
2 / Demonstrate basic email functions
  • use clear subject lines
  • put the most important information in the first paragraph
  • keep messages short
  • avoid use of slang
  • pay attention to spelling, grammar, punctuation, and good sentence structure—you are representing the company
  • be careful what you say—email is very public
  • send a carbon copy to only those that need to receive it—people have too many emails already
  • proofread carefully before you send
  • don’t send emails in all capital letters—it implies shouting
  • multiple colours and fonts are not businesslike
  • don’t send chain letters from office email accounts
  • know the functions of email—send, send all, attachments, reply, reply all, unsend, etc

2 / Demonstrate connections between company actions and results
Most companies will compare their actions and results by having set some specific objectives and seeing how closely they are meeting them. In this case, the company will probably be setting goals involved with an increase in revenue and/or an increase in profit. They would want to have the results of the catering function kept separate from the results of the regular restaurant activity although there would be some carry-over of fixed costs between the two practices. They might even separate the activities into two separate companies. In any case there should be a measureable difference in the company in terms of profit.
Brochures, ads and web pages are not results. A marketing department needs tangible objectives and deliverables. But it is easy to fall into the trap that looks at these deliverables as ends in themselves. A new department in the store means nothing if it doesn’t in some way contributes to improving the state of your business. Similarly, brand awareness isn't a result. It is also a means. Building brand awareness may be a reasonable objective but only if your marketing team can articulate how it drives results. . Opening a coffee shop is not a result.
That's all the more reason that your marketing efforts need to be focused on the right results. Because it is difficult to measure directly the effects of many marketing tactics, it is important to design those tactics with appropriate end results in mind
What are your most influential economic engines, and are your marketing efforts focused on them? Do you make significantly more profit on a small number of loyal customers than you do on a large number of transactional customers? If so, do your marketing efforts focus appropriate energy on building customer loyalty, or is the lion's share of your efforts focused on finding new customers? Does opening a coffee shop add significantly to the profitability of product sales?
Demonstrate honesty and integrity
5 / Demonstrate problem-solving skills
Identify the issues
  • Be clear about what the problem is.
  • Remember that different people might have different views of what the issues are.
  • Separate the listing of issues from the identification of interests (that's the next step!).
Understand everyone's interests
  • This is a critical step that is usually missing.
  • Interests are the needs that you want satisfied by any given solution. We often ignore our true interests as we become attached to one particular solution.
  • The best solution is the one that satisfies everyone's interests.
  • This is the time for active listening. Put down your differences for awhile and listen to each other with the intention to understand.
  • Separate the naming of interests from the listing of solutions.
List the possible solutions (options)
  • This is the time to do some brainstorming. There may be lots of room for creativity.
  • Separate the listing of options from the evaluation of the options.
Evaluate the options