Guest Speaker on the topic of Ethical and Legal Issues in Personal Selling

5 Important Points highlighted: 

1. Mis-selling

This would be an attempt by a salesperson to convince a customer to purchase a good or service that is not appropriate for the client or not best suited for the client’s needs.

2. Misrepresentation

Under contract law, a misrepresentation is defined as a false statement of a material fact made by one party to another which had included the other party to enter into a contract.

3 types of misrepresentation which commonly occurs:

·         Fraudulent misrepresentation

If the individual knows that the statement made was false, did not believe in the truth of the statement or was recklessly careless whether the statement was true or false.

·         Negligent Misrepresentation

Statement made without reasonable grounds for its belief.

·         Innocent Misrepresentation

There was reasonable ground to believe that the statement was true.

3. Unlicensed Selling
Not authorized to sell and not having any official government approval to sell.

4. High Pressure Selling

High pressure selling is applying psychological pressure (by appealing to someone’s fears, greed or vanity) to persuade the prospect to make a quick purchase decision. The sales person’s behavior is usually aggressive.

5. Cheating

This is an immoral way of achieving a goal.  It is generally used when someone is trying to gain advantage in a competitive situation.

One example would be a 32 year old Direct Sales Agent from Touch & Tech (a telemarketing company), Hazel  Vicente, found guilty of forgery. Standard Chartered engaged Touch & Tech to reach out to prospective companies for unsecured credit facilities.  In order to meet her monthly sales target Hazel forged her applicants’ pay slip, inflating their salaries so that their annual pay would appear to meet the minimum income requirement laid down by the bank. She will be imprisoned for 2 years and 3 months. 

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Personal Selling in Action

A Red bull promoter offering free samples

3 areas of value creation that the sales promoter offers to the customer:

1) Synergy between sales and marketing - Being an energy drink, Red Bull promotes itself as a drink for workaholics, students studying for their examintions, and sportsmen. Thus as we can see from this picture, a female promoter is handing out free Red Bull to the students and teachers at a conference show

2) Product Quality - With its global brand recognition, Red Bull no doubt has excellence quality in their drinks. That is why to further stimulate the brand-awareness amongst the market, it gives out free Red Bull to members of the public to enable them to experience the benefit first hand by trying out the Red Bull themselves.

3) Integrated Marketing Communications - As an avid sports drink, Red Bull is consistently involved in participating and sponsoring sports. Such sports are F1, Red bull rally, Red Bull rampage and mountain biking

A Red Bull rally car (SKODA)  in action

                                      

Sources of Prospects!

Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW) is a five-day conference where individuals from various backgrounds, including political, industrial, and academia come together from around the world to discuss various clean technology issues and its importance within the energy industry. The 2011 conference is titled “Securing our Energy Future” and includes a number of key events, including Clean Energy Expo Asia, Asia Smart Grid 2011, Carbon Forum Asia, and Singapore Energy Summit. Singapore was selected as the host due in large part because of its importance as a main player in the energy industry.

Networking

Royal Dutch Shell


One of the largest exhibitors on SIEW was Shell. Being one of the largest energy companies in the world and having an enormous footprint in the South-east Asia and Asia Pacific region, Shell has played a significant role in researching, developing, and providing energy services throughout these countries.

Some of the benefits or reasons on Shell participating in such events are;

  --> Networking 

Since the conference/tradeshow is an event whereby leaders from both energy businesses and political around the world get together, it enables them to establish critical networking contacts of both political leaders and peers in the energy industry for future possible business endeavours.

·          --> Up-to-date market information
With global energy leaders from both political and multinational energy corporation, it enables exhibitors like Shell to get updates about future energy market endeavours that could impact this business as a whole, and also identify future business opportunities between these parties.

SELLING FACTORS and ACTIVITIES!

Click on the comments to view the selling activities we like and dislike! 

Main advantages to careers in selling

Sales strategies create a competitive advantage. Having a career in selling requires you to work your brain to come out with sales strategies and tactics on how to reach clients, acquire resources and outsell competitors. It teaches you to understand people and gives you drive and determination as well to meet sales targets.

Salespeople work for and are paid on results. To meet sales targets, you’ll have to manage your time well and achieve results for your employer. Thus, aside from time management skills, salespeople also learn independence.

Having a career in selling also trains your people skills. It teaches you how to communicate with people politely as you try to persuade your potential customers. Relationships with customers also have to be developed for follow-ups. It also helps you to be patient in helping your prospect identify a product most suited for their needs. By guiding your prospect in making intelligent decisions, you learn problem solving skills too.

Below are the advantages of being in a sales career:

Fun and Exciting Career

Reason being that, in the line of sales, one can get to travel to a variety of new places as well as meet people from all walks of life. Life was meant to be fun so you might as well have fun while making a high income in a sales career.

Life-long Skills

Skills that one picks up in a sales job are portable. The selling skills can be adapted into other types of careers. Examples of such skills would include interpersonal and leadership.

Excellent Portfolio

With positive sales performance, you are definitely in demand.  In most circumstances the individual any company would really love to hire is a top-quality salesperson to sell the product or service.  The demand for both experienced and effective salespeople is very high.

Limitless income

In a sales profession there are no income ceilings.  The better your performance, the higher commission you can make.  It is hard to imagine a sales manager saying “Look here, you are doing a great job but you'll have to slow down.”

Low investment capital

Selling offers potentially large returns from a low capital investment. Unlike professions like being a doctor or lawyer, you do not need to go to college which can be both lengthy and pricey. Unlike buying a franchise you do not need have a sizeable start-up capital and take unnecessary risks. Being in sales, your only investment would be time in learning the skills of selling and if you learn these skills well your return on investment will be huge.

Challenging career

In your selling career, you will be challenged daily so no two days are the same. Every day you'll be confronted with new obstacles and situations to overcome. This ensures your job would not be monotonous or mundane in the long-run.

‘Own Time, Own Target’

A sales job also offers flexible work hours and lifestyle. One has the choice of work or family centric life. Thus a work-life balance that is suitable for each individual is achievable.

Selling can be one of the most rewarding careers.  For a low investment in selling skills, you can enter into a career that enables you to earn thousands of dollars per annum.  Unlike many other careers, with hard work and perseverance you can earn money fast and be challenged every day with numerous new and unique challenges. It's an awesome lifestyle.

Adapted from the following websites:

http://EzineArticles.com/3074645

http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/personal-selling/advantages-of-personal-selling/
http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/sales/a/aa111002a.htm 

What is involved in becoming a customer-centric organization?

Customer centric definition

Customer-centric refers to placing the wants and needs of the customer as the centre of a company's marketing effort, focusing on customers rather than sales

Benefit

Being customer-centric results in the building and maintaining of long term relationships with profitable customers, ultimately earning long term profits.

Steps to a customer-centric organization

Understanding the customer's needs and requirements is the key to delivering the right product at the right time to promote customer satisfaction. This can be done by having clear customer segmentation so the needs of each unique segment can be effectively met. Through this, it also allows organizations to better allocate limited resources to maximize customer acquisition, retention and profitability.

Promote knowledge of marketplace in entire organization allows all staffs to be more aware of the customer needs in all level of the organization. This promotes customer centric services and products in all levels including customer services and not just a suitable product. This can be done in the by organizing training or talks for the staffs.

Listen and responding to customer’s feedbacks and ever-changing needs is also an important step to becoming customer-centric. This requires providing a channel for customers to escalate their opinions and feedbacks. It requires ongoing obtaining and analyzing of customer’s response from all touch-points that a customer has with the organization. After analyzing, responding includes planning and implementing strategies to improve on customer experience.