Sales And Leads
Some people think of a sale as a transaction with an associated date and time. Seasoned salespeople know better. Sales is a process, in which a potential client must be cultivated if a successful sales is to occur.
The first step in the process is the training of the salesperson. Salespeople need the people skills of a politician and the product knowledge of an engineer. That's because a salesperson is the face of the company. Poor sales skill will torpedo a perfectly good product. Conversely, a good salesman could sell snow to Eskimos.
Many salespeople have had undergraduate work in marketing and retailing. Often, they intern over the summer months at interesting firms. Their goal is to achieve a level of comfort with themselves in their roles as a company representative. To that end, rookie salespeople are often paired with veterans who can show the recruits how to represent their employer in the most favorable light.
A new salesman will often be given a new territory to cover. At this point, the salesperson is grateful for a list of sales leads. This list should be high quality and have some reliable information. If the nature of the company is business to business, the list should contain:
1. Contact information for each company – name and address
2. Names and titles of senior and middle-management executives
3. Classification of the type of business
4. Number of employees at each company
5. The annual sales volume for each company
6. Geographical information
7. Information about buildings and plant
However, many companies are consumer-based. In that case, a sales lead list should contain this kind of information:
Homeowner/renter
Income
Marital Status
Home Value
Gender
Length of residence
Age
Armed with this information, a telemarketing or direct marketing salesforce is at a distinct advantage to its competition.
What's New
Center for Economical Development is working to understand the importance of embracing brand reputation management as a strategic imperative to online business monitoring. This effort is to educate brand marketers on how to effectively deal with online brand damage. Teaching strategies will mirror the online writings of reputation management expert, Michael Fertik. Online brand reputation protection is key to insuring the growth of well known brands within a fragile economical climate.
The Center for Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University would like you to know that we have updated our website! This latest update includes a mix of research on the financial market, payday loans, and other resources and information on events of interest to the economic development community.
"Education starts with perfecting the basics like reading and we sometimes forget that poor literacy skills are still common in developed countries like Canada. Making reading and learning fun at a young age we hope will help to address this problem in our community" said Josh Felker, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Vigilant Futures.
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The FASA program (pdf, 1.8Mkb)
Published: March 10, 2008
Do you need debt consolidation help? Do you need an accountant? If so, the Center for Economic Development provides information and links to various resources covering debt trends. A recent study by researchers and graduate students has shown that while much of America is suffering under intense pressure from the shear weight of credit card debt loads, universities and colleges all across this great nation are doing their part to find out what can be done to help the nations economy. Here at Carnegie Mellon University, we seek to be a part of that educational movement.