Case Studies

Grace Hart Experience and iTeam,Inc

If I am a sales person then I follow these fewer points

I’ve always had a pretty good relationship with the idea of being a salesperson. For some reason,
even from an early age, I had it in my head that sales was simply about finding people who
wanted what I had to offer. So, for instance, selling Camp Fire Girls candy in grade school held
no terrors for me: I’d go around and ask people if they wanted to buy it, and if not, I’d ask the
next person. I figured there was no harm in asking, even if they didn’t want it - and them not
wanting it didn’t have anything to do with me; maybe they didn’t like candy, or were on a diet,
or had already bought some from somebody else.

And actually, that’s pretty much how I sell today, 50 years later. When I hear of someone who
seems as though he or she might have a need for what my company does, I'll set up a
conversation with that person. When we get together, I'll listen to find out whether my belief is
accurate - whether he or she might benefit from something Proteus offers. If so, I explain the
service or product I think they might find useful. I ask if they’re interested in exploring a
possible fit between their need and our offer. If not, I assume it’s because they 1) don’t see the
need in the same way I do, or 2) they believe they have a better way of meeting that need that
doesn’t involve Proteus. I may be disappointed, especially if I see the need clearly, and don't
believe the person is going to be able to be successful in solving the problem without us. But I
also know there are lots of other possible clients out there (and lots of wonderful current clients
to support, as well), so I'm usually happy to move on. Next!

I recently read a wonderful little book, Dan Pink’s To Sell Is Human, that reinforced these
positive ideas I’ve had about selling for all these years. Pink talks about selling as "moving
people" to behave differently or think differently - and points out that in today's world, even
people who don't think of themselves as salespeople are selling indirectly much of the time. Two
areas of endeavor he uses as examples throughout the book are the medical field - where patients
need to be 'sold' on adopting healtheir habits or following courses of treatment, and education -
where students need to be 'sold' on the idea that learning what's put in front of them is going to
be worth their while. Pink talks about the importance, in this new world of selling, of entering
into any "moving" conversation in a collaborative, listening-focused way, as a partner who is a
problem-clarifier and problem-solver.
At the same time, reading Pink's book also made it much clearer to me why most people don’t
view sales in such a positive light – why they have a ‘cringe’ relationship with the idea of
selling. Pink cites lots of great research showing that rather than seeing sales as a collaborative,
mutually beneficial process of finding a fit between need and offer, as I've described
above, people tend to see it as manipulative, pushy, inauthentic, slightly sleazy. Sales, for most
people, evokes images of being glad-handed and lied to by some untrustworthy used-car-
salesman-type in a shiny suit and bad toupee. No wonder people think they don’t like to sell!

The problem with holding on to that old, outmoded conception of selling is that almost all of us
need to be able to sell. If you define selling, as Pink does, as ‘the art of moving others,’ we’re
selling ideas, opinions, and proposed courses of action every day – to our kids, our boss, our
spouses, our PTA group, our employees. And for those of us who are entrepreneurs or
freelancers, even more of our time is spent ‘moving others’ to see that fit between our business
or ourselves and their need.

So it makes sense to shift our ideas about selling – and that means (many of you know this is
favorite topic of mine) changing our self-talk. Here’s a quick and simple exercise for doing just
that:

Salesforce Lightning is the Salesforce embracing the 21st century. With intuitive tools and
services to automate business processes along with external application integration, the
Lightning Platform is your one stop shop for robust CRM attributes and interactive UI that make
your work all the more delightful.

The defining features of Salesforce Lightning are the interactive tabs, activity timeline and
homepage components; all of which streamline your workflows and put the right things at the
right place to maximize the productivity of your sales, marketing and service teams. But despite
all these fancy new features, organizations are still pondering if its the right time to migrate to
Salesforce Lightning. This is due to a number of reasons, large organizations can’t risk
jeopardizing their operations, Lightning still has a long way to go concerning tasks accessible in
Salesforce Classic and the fact that most people just don’t know where to start. If your reason is
the latter, pick up that phone and call us now, we provide complete Salesforce Migration
services with the most effective (ETL) tools that ensure complete data mapping, integrity and
security.

iTeam , Inc
Three strengths of TEAM: you are flexible, organized, and have a pleasant and professional
manner. You work so well with the Board of Directors and all committee chairs, and the
preparation and coordination of all responsibilities pertaining to the Green Lake
Conference are outstanding. WMC’s records are well-maintained and the day-to-day
operations are managed very well.

Our organization was one of TEAM’s first clients, and Becky Fisher’s experience has been
invaluable to me and many other Board and committee members over the years. If you
want to know how the Board addressed an item five years ago, TEAM will find the answer.
And, if you want to know what was discussed at a committee meeting three months ago,
they will have the answer is short order. It is this kind of accumulated knowledge that
provides our organization with year-to-year stability and consistency many associations are
hard pressed to find. Thank you for your dedication and knowledgeable guidance. You have
made this job easier by tenfold.

Process of Selling and Buying

Action Selling Skills & Sales Process

The Action Selling Sales Process is a research-proven, non-manipulative procedure that helps
salespeople move the sale forward – naturally, by following the decision-making process of the
buyer. These decisions are made in the following order:

The Five Buying Decisions

1. Salesperson – Customers decide if they like and trust you.

2. Company – What is your company’s reputation? Is your company a good match for
them?
3. Product – Is your product the right solution for their needs?
4. Price – Is your solution competitively priced? Is it a good value?
5. Time to Buy – Is now a good time for them to move forward with the purchase?
Customers will find reasons not to buy when your sales call is out of sync with their buying
decisions. To increase your selling success, you must sequence your presentation to follow the
buyers decision-making process.

The Nine Acts of a Sale

Action Selling divides a sale into nine key components we call “Acts”. With each Act, the
salesperson uses a critical Selling Skill that enables them to move the sale forward
naturally as each buying decision is being made.

Benefits of Using The Process

The 9 Acts of the sale moving in progression with the Five Buying Decisions give salespeople a
road map to follow helping them:

 Stay in sync with how customers make decisions

 Use skills that maximize success potential
 Move the sale forward
 Shorten sales cycles
 Protect margins
 Win More Sales

Marketing intelligence and its importance for sales forces: A marketing intelligence system
is a set of procedures and sources used by managers to obtain their everyday information about
pertinent developments in the environment in which they operate. The marketing intelligence
system supplies data about the market. And other definition of marketing intelligence system is
that it is a system for capturing the necessary information for business marketing decision
making (Mochtar and Arditi, 2001). If a company utilizes marketing intelligence systems, the
output can result in sound marketing decisions which can be one of the best sources of
competitive advantage (Lackman et al., 2000). When a company is able to accurately assess the
competition by gathering competitive information, it is in a better position to build differentiation
for their company. It may be that one company in the competitive set is the low cost provider and
the other company has a superior process for providing the service (Johns and Van Doren, 2010).
Daily, customers, rivals, suppliers and employments provide benefit informational bits for
business owners. Customers talk with firm labors, rivals enclose their programs with customers,
employment seeks opportunities and experimental problems and suppliers discuss with people.
Gathering systematical these free data and using it for powering commerce is the main challenge
(Bon and Merunka, 2006). It is, therefore, essential for marketing intelligence officers to work
with marketing strategists and develop appropriate marketing intelligence systems that allow
customer relationships to be mapped, modeled and then translated into new buyer behavior
models (Trim and Lee, 2006).

As a global concept, marketing information can best be understood by its decomposition into
marketing research and marketing intelligence. Although, both activities aim at collecting and
providing information to management for better and more timely decision-making purposes,
marketing research and marketing intelligence differ in three key aspects: the flow of
information, the type of information provided and the use of information (Bon and Merunka,
2006). Marketing intelligence is viewed in its totality as a continuing and interacting structure of
people, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analyze and distribute pertinent, timely and
accurate information for use by marketing decision makers to improve their marketing planning,
implementation and control (Tan and Ahmed, 1999). In other word, marketing intelligence is the
product of collection, evaluation, analysis, integration and interpretation of all available
information that may affect the survival and success if the company (Trim and Lee, 2008).
Market intelligence serves four primary purposes. These are:

• Competitors’ assessment and tracking

• Early warnings of opportunities and threats
• Support for strategic planning and implementation
• Support of strategic decision-making

Marketing research on the other hand is the systematic and objective identification, collection,
analysis and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision
making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing (Tan
and Ahmed, 1999) market research activities are devoted to the collection and analysis of data
linked to precise research questions such as new product acceptance or advertising effectiveness.
Therefore, information is discontinuous and planned. A piece of market research information
corresponds to a defined goal and focused objectives. Information collected needs to be precise,
carefully measured, controlled and analyzed and the results obtained should enable managers to
reduce decision-making uncertainty (Bon and Merunka, 2006). Sales force of an organization is
the most important factor that is responsible for entering data and information to marketing
intelligence system whiles others responsible for staff role (Lee and Trim, 2006). It is estimated
that, between 70 and 80% of the intelligence a company typically needs resides with employees
who collect it while dealing with the company’s suppliers, customers and other industry contacts.
The challenge for companies is to create a way of collecting and analyzing the useful
information that resides with employees (Tan and Ahmed, 1999). Collecting and transmitting
environmental information is a specific and important assignment of the selling function.
Salespeople may notice changes in customers’ needs, the test or launch of a new product on the
market or a price modification by competitors. They might be able to predict their customers’
attitudes and behavior toward a new product or provide good estimations of how customers
perceive products’ attributes (Bon and Merunka, 2006). Furthermore, in a digitalized economy in
which online selling is growing, the sales organization must consider the new challenges of
being a relevant information provider (to customers) and a sound information collector (for the
company) rather than just an order taker (Neil and DeVincentis, 1999). Marketing intelligence
officers need to look more closely at what influences customer demand. This means that
adequate attention is paid to market dynamics and in particular, how change originates. This
means that various factors need to be evaluated and monitored such as the role of government,
changes in government regulations that result in breakthroughs in technology and the emergence
of consumer pressure groups that are concerned with environmental issues for example. As a
result, marketing intelligence officers need to think of intelligence gathering as an ongoing,
multi-dimensional process that involves aspects of counterintelligence (Trim and Lee, 2006). But
contrast of sales forces vital role in marketing intelligence system, practically, research suggest
the poor reliability of the sales forces in collecting and transmitting market information;
information gathered through salespersons is imprecise and may reach decision makers only after
considerable delay. Also, information transmitted can be biased because salespeople receive
incorrect and incomplete information from their customers wish to transmit information that is
favorable to them, do not adequately estimate their customers’ expectations, or overestimate their
sensitivity to price.

External: The Economy

In a bad economy, even a well-run business may not be able to survive. If customers
lose their jobs or take jobs that can barely support them, they'll spend less on
sports, recreation, gifts, luxury goods and new cars. High interest rates on credit
cards can discourage customers from spending. You can't control the economy, but
understanding it can help you spot threats and opportunities.

Internal: Staff

Unless you're a one-person show, your employees are a major part of your
company's internal environment. Your employees have to be good at their jobs,
whether it's writing code or selling products to strangers. Managers have to be good
at handling lower-level employees and overseeing other parts of the internal
environment. Even if everyone's capable and talented, internal politics and conflicts
can wreck a good company.

External: Competition

Unless your company is unique, you'll have to deal with competition. When you
start your company, you fight against established, more experienced businesses in
the same industry. After you establish yourself, you'll eventually have to face newer
firms that try to slice away your customers. Competition can make or break you –
look at how many brick-and-mortar bookstores crashed and burned competing with
Amazon.

Internal: Money

Even in a great economy, lack of money can determine whether your company
survives or dies. When your cash resources are too limited, it affects the number of
people you can hire, the quality of your equipment, and the amount of advertising
you can buy. If you're flush with cash, you have a lot more flexibility to grow and
expand your business or endure an economic downturn.

External: Politics

Changes in government policy can have a huge effect on your business. The tobacco
industry is a classic example. Since the 1950s, cigarette companies have been
required to place warning labels on their products, and they lost the right to
advertise on television. Smokers have fewer and fewer places they can smoke
legally. The percentage of Americans who smoke has dropped by more than half,
with a corresponding effect on industry revenues.

Internal: Company Culture

Your internal culture consists of the values, attitudes and priorities that your
employees live by. A cutthroat culture where every employee competes with one
another creates a different environment from a company that emphasizes
collaboration and teamwork. Typically, company culture flows from the top down.
Your staff will infer your values based on the type of people you hire, fire and
promote. Let them see the values you want your culture to embody.

External: Customers and Suppliers

Next to your employees, your customers and suppliers may be the most important
people you deal with. Suppliers have a huge impact on your costs. The clout of any
given supplier depends on scarcity: If you can't buy anywhere else, your negotiating
room is limited. The power of your customers depends on how fierce the competition
for their dollars is, how good your products are, and whether your advertising
makes customers want to buy from you, among other things.