The Selling Process

You are to assume the role of sales representative of a major cell phone provider. You are responsible for selling smart phones and plans to customers. Your primary customers are walk in clients that are looking to upgrade their call & texting only phones to smart phones. Since you are an experienced sales associate your manager has assigned you the task of training employees on the 7 steps of the selling process in order to better service customers and ensure their satisfaction.

Assignment: Your sales manager wants you to create a training manual for new sales employees to use in educating them on the selling process. Complete the assignments below to be included in your sales manual.

Part 1 – List and briefly describe the seven steps of the selling process. Be sure to address each step and describe the main points that should be completed in each step.

Part 2 – Preparing for the sale: Describe why it is important to research & identify the features and benefits of a product. Create a sample “feature-benefit” chart on a current smart phone that new sales employees can use as an example for other products. You are to choose a current smartphone on the market and create a “Feature – Benefit” chart detailing 10 unique features of the phone and one benefit to the customer for each.

Part 3 –Initiating the sale: List the three ways to approach the customer and initiate the sale. Briefly describe the 3 ways and come up with at least three sample open-ended questions for each specific way that can be used to initiate the sales process. Keep in mind, for it to be a good opening question the customer should not be able to respond with “yes” or “no”.

Part 4 – Determining Needs: Describe the importance of determining a customers needs & wants. List at least 5 sample questions a salesperson could ask customers to determine their needs or wants. As with initiating the sale you should create questions that are open ended that can not be simple answered with a “yes” or “no”.

Part 5 – Prescribing Solutions: List at least 5 common needs or wants a typical customer would give a sales person when shopping for a smart phone. List these common needs and provide a sample feature/benefit next to each that could be focused on by the salesperson satisfy each.

Part 6 – Handling Objections: List at least 3 common objections a customer may have about a smart phone and provide example responses a salesperson could give in response to each objection.

Part 7 – Closing the Sale: Describe “suggestion selling” to a new salesperson & how it can be used at the close of a sale. Identify 5 example smart phone accessories that could be suggested to a customer at the close of a sale.

Part 8 – Follow Up: Describe the importance of following up with a customer. List at least 3 specific things a salesperson could do to reaffirm the buyer-seller relationship.