The company consists of the original 2 owners/partners, 1 office manager, 1 project manager, 3 designers, 1 technical support person, and 3 salespeople. Although the company is small, they have been in business for over 10 years and have some key alliances. Some of the large advertising firms and public relations firms outsource work to your shop. Some of your projects are outsourced for: printing, slide production, high-end video edits, and illustration.
With the changes in the economy, the company has chosen to stay small in order to respond quickly, but revenues are continuing to drop, and repeat business is slowing considerably. More often, the owners are bartering services with alliances because liquid assets are unavailable. The 2 owners serve as artists/ designers, sometimes salespeople, and also attempt to lead marketing efforts, but without a strategic marketing plan.
Clients tend to be friends of the owners, one-person businesses, advertising agencies, large internationally recognized companies, and marketing or sales professionals in various industries.
In this small firm, many times salespeople and/or designers act as project managers, which takes them away from bringing in new business or working on projects. This has been a frustration for the sales people since they work on commission and they are not paid separately for managing projects. The designers also get frustrated when this happens, because they end up receiving creative direction from a sales person and not an art director/creative director. Also, when the designers end up project managing, their time is split and objectivity on the project may suffer, resulting in a less refined outcome.
To turn the company’s business around, the company owner decided to boost sales. As a result, your responsibilities as a salesperson will be expanded to include: prospecting new business, servicing existing clients, keeping clients informed of project progression and listening to their feedback, communicating with internal staff regarding client projects, generating more business from existing clients, participating in networking/ business events to generate more contacts for building new business opportunities.
You and your sales colleagues at Studio Productions have a lot of sales experience, including dealing with objections. From these methods of responding to objections:
...forestalling, direct denial, indirect denial, translation/boomerang,
compensation, questioning/assessing, or third-party reinforcement,choose two that you believe are the most effective. Identify and explain (with an example) why you believe they are the most effective.
References
Textbook reading: Ingram, Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Textbook reading: Swarzlander, Chapter 12, 13
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