Page 100 - Communication in Organizations Basic Skills and Conversation Models

The sales interview 89

Introduction

The sales interview has a very obvious goal. The seller (sender) wants to sell his product
to a buyer (receiver). There cannot be any misunderstanding about this and both parties
know it. The road to that goal is however much less obvious and contains many hurdles,
one of which is the seller’s technique.
In general we can distinguish two selling techniques: the situation in which the
customer contacts the salesperson; the situation in which the salesperson goes out and
looks for potential clients for the product or service. In the first situation, customers have
already completed a large part of the process that leads to the purchasing of the product.
They have already decided that they want to be informed about the product and they
know more or less what the seller is offering. In the second situation, customers have to
start the decision process from the beginning. Although the sales interview in both
situations consists of the same successive phases, the execution of these phases will
sometimes differ.
In this chapter we discuss the preparation of the sales interview, the structure of the
sales interview, and the interviewing skills that are important at each phase. Finally, we
summarize with an overview of the different phases together with the relevant skills
involved.

Preparation

A thorough preparation of a sales interview is half the work. First, sellers should try to
find out the needs and wants of the customer. Second, they should have in mind a list of
the qualities of the product or service. They should ask themselves which qualities of
their product fit well with the wishes and needs of the client. If sellers are able to make a
relationship between these two areas, they can provide some strong arguments to promote
their product:

Gerald Glass can, for example, link the experience of the company with
prestigious hotels as a special quality fitting the needs of the Thames
Hotel. The fact that one of their headwaiters and a couple of temporary
waiters have worked for the Thames Hotel in the past means that Dinner
Ltd can adapt quickly to the organizational culture of the Thames Hotel.

During the preparation stage, sellers should also think about the structure of the sales
interview. They have to decide what they want to bring up at each phase of the interview,
and when they want to give room to the customers. Finally salespersons should prepare
themselves for any possible objections that customers may bring up and the way they will
react to them. We now discuss the structure of this interview.