Career in Telecom Sales

One of those jobs is a career in telecom sales. For the right person, telecom sales can be the opportunity to enjoy financial security again - even financial freedom and job security - during the credit crunch. There are three reasons that a telecom sales job is the right job in this economy.

1. Telecom solutions are ALWAYS in demand so you have the job security that others do not enjoy. People might cut back on paying for entertainment; they might buy fewer clothes; they might take fewer trips; they might buy lower quality food; but they will continue to use mobile phones. You know it's true for consumers. It's also true for businesses. Organizations that want to get their sales staff into the marketplace might save money by scaling down office expenses; they might stop the so called perks; but they need their sales staff to be connected. And that requires telecom solutions.

As a telecom sales consultant, your job would be to meet in-demand needs from businesses that know they require telecom solutions to survive and thrive. You would be the expert, guiding them in their decision-making to help them discover the best plan for their needs. Unlike other sales positions, like many retail positions, this is an opportunity for trusted, respected business-to-business (B2B) solution selling. With every interaction, you build job security as business clients come to trust you to help them succeed.

2. Telecom sales are commission-based, so you're not stuck earning a salary that puts a cap on your earning potential. Along with job security from the increasing trust you generate, you can also enjoy financial success. Financial success is one of those common phrases that job-seekers hear so frequently it becomes laughable. Sadly, many of those claims come out of low-paying call center jobs that demand a pound of flesh from their employees and provide little respect or actual remuneration in return.

Telecom sales, though, can offer real financial success. That's because it's not a call centre job or a retail job in which your pay depends on who answers the phone or who comes into the store. If you want ten customers, you secure ten customers. If you want a hundred customers, you secure a hundred customers. There's no income cap or ceiling - the commission you earn from your efforts is yours and if you want a lot of money you can get it.

This isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. As a commission-based sales consultant, the only limit you place on your income is yourself. If you think you'll fail, it becomes a distinct possibility. But if you are confident that you'll succeed, and earn the money you deserve by actively going into the marketplace and finding those customers, you can succeed - even far more than you imagine.

3. Telecom sales can fit into your life. Sometimes you hear about people having to take on a low-paying part-time job to supplement their current full-time one. It might be the right choice for some people who have lost the job security they once had; or perhaps a spouse has lost a job and the income needs to be made up somehow. This is where a telecom sales position is beneficial. Unlike directing traffic or restocking shelves, telecom sales can be the perfect part time solution. Because you are commission based, your time is virtually your own, which means your success is also.

I am proud to say i am in Telecom Sales,So when are you planning to join hands with me!!!!!!!!

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis helps you balance idealism and pragmatism, and obtain a balanced perspective of your internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats to develop an effective strategy.

Why SWOT Analysis?

SWOT Analysis is the Key Component of Strategic Development. It can prompt actions and responses.

Successful businesses build on their strengths, correct their weaknesses and protect against internal vulnerabilities and external threats. They also keep an eye on their overall business environment and spot and exploit new opportunities faster than competitors. SWOT analysis is a tool that helps many businesses in this process.

SWOT analysis is based on the assumption that if managers can carefully review such strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, a useful strategy for ensuring organizational success will become evident to them.

Strengths

Two factors contribute to your strengths: ability and resources available.

Ability is evaluated on 3 counts:

Versatility: your ability to adapt to an ever changing environment.

Growth: your ability to maintain a continuing growth.

Markets: your ability to penetrate or create new markets.

The strength of resources has three dimensions:

Availability: your ability to obtain the resources needed.

Quality: the quality and up-to-dateness of the resources employed.

Allocation: your ability to distribute resources both effectively and efficiently.

Weaknesses

Your weaknesses are determined through failures, defeats, losses and inability to match up with the dynamic situation and rapid change. The weaknesses may be rooted in lack of managerial skills, insufficient quality, technological backwardness, inadequate systems or processes, slow deliveries, or shortage of resources. There are three possible outcomes to the analysis of your weaknesses.1

Correction of an identified defect.

Protection through cover-up and prevention strategies to reduce the exposure of your weaknesses.

Aggression to divert the attention from your weaknesses.

Opportunities

Opportunities are abundant. You must develop a formula which will help you define what comes within the ambit of an opportunity to focus on those areas and pursue those opportunities where effectiveness is possible. The formula must define product/service, target market, capabilities required and resources to be employed, returns expected and the level of risk allowed.

Weaknesses of your competitions are also opportunities for you. You can exploit them in two following ways:

Marketing warfare: attacking the weak leader's position and focusing all your efforts at that point, or making a surprise move into an uncontested area.

Collaboration: you can use your complementary strengths to establish a strategic alliance with your competitor.

Threats

External threats arise from political, economic, social, technological (PEST) forces. Technological developments may make your offerings obsolete. Market changes may result from the changes in the customer needs, competitors' moves, or demographic shifts. The political situation determines government policy and taxation structure.

THE DIRECT SALES CYCLE

PLANNING:
Sales plan, goals, key results, targets,key activities, attitude, skills, knowledge benefits, resources, partnering, time management

PROSPECTING:
Information sources, direct mail,telephoning, making appointments, selling by phone, word pictures, rapport,objection handling, checklist

QUALIFYING:
Incoming phone calls, incoming sales calls, first visits, decision process, authorities, four personality types

FACT-FINDING:
Needs analysis, questions, responses,active listening, feasibility survey, cost benefits, checklist

PRESENTING:
Preparation, tools, aims, content,timing, pre-delivery, delivery, audience control, audience questions, written proposals, via third parties, exhibitions

COMMITTING:
Buying criteria, keeping initiative,objection handling, negotiating,closing, ethics

DEVELOPING:
Customer care, referrals, surveying satisfaction, defusing complaints

CONTROLLING:
Forecasting, reports, activity ratios,collecting payment, managing relationships, developing new business,the last word

Client Relationship

Clients are the most precious assets for a business. Without clients, there can be no business. With poor quality of clients, the business will be poor and if you manage to get very good clients and retain their loyalty, your business will only go up and up. This all sounds very exciting. But it is not easy to get very good clients and all the more difficult to retain them. After all, whatever you do, your competition is trying the same and may use better techniques to get business. Are there any innovative approaches to client relationships?

We are talking about direct sales in this discussion and not about selling merchandise to large consumer base. For example if you are a contractor maintaining air conditioners in clients work places. Or a direct seller of computer hardware to business buyers, and all such businesses where your sales to individual clients are large, and you are in direct contact with clients.

The first need is of course client satisfaction. If the client is satisfied with your response time, after sales service and can depend on you, pricing may become secondary. All clients do not buy from a supplier whose sales at the lowest price. If your product cost is a small percentage of clients total expense or if your product is essential for your clients, you are onto something good. How to retain such clients despite all the competition? What are the other factors than client satisfaction?

Relationship is one such other major factor. Do you relate with your clients only professionally, or are very good friends? Both these extremes can hurt. For a long-term business relationship, good friendship is not good for health of your business. Any problem in the personal friendship will directly affect your business. What if you relate to your clients mechanically in a professional style totally devoid of personal touch? You know the answer yourself.

What is needed is a relationship that does not border on personal friendships, but crosses mechanical approach. A fine balance between personal and professional.

Have good sales!

Public Social Networks

As a Marketing person Public social contacts is very essential to make good sales and achieve company targets.

External public social networking services, such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Friendster, can be valuable sales, marketing, and support tools. These services comprise extensive networks of users who are self-organized into groups and communities.

Users establish connections directly with other users to form a personal friends network. Users also join groups and communities that are organized around attributes such as products, lifestyles, entertainment, institutions, politics, and geographic locations.

Social network users also build their own extensive demographic profiles by connecting to dozens or hundreds of affinity groups, not just connecting to other users. This self-segmentation phenomenon is why social networks present marketers and advertisers with such a potentially lucrative audience for promoting goods and services.

There are several ways an organization can benefit from using public social networks, including:

* HR recruiting
* Product marketing
* Services outreach
* Promotional application
* Market intelligence
* Professional networking

Companies are exploiting public social networking sites for valid business purposes. However, a lack of enterprise-class controls makes management of users akin to herding cats. By adopting strong policies for business use of public social networks, small and midsize businesses can maximize value and safeguard against inappropriate connections between personal and business contacts.

SPANCO Process

Selling is an art of good customer relationship and influencing the customer to buy or avail a service based on his/her requirement. It has to be combined with the necessary factors for success, motivation, incentives, training, etc. not forgetting the methodology. They are many processes in sales, I would like to share the one I learnt from my seniors at work .They follow a process which tells everything about sales and how it works on.

“SPANCO” stands for:

•Suspect - Definition of the target
•Prospect - Identification of the lead
•Approach - Analysis Evaluation and qualification of requirements, identification of the solution
•Negotiation - Negotiation process
•Closing - Finalization of the order
•Order Ongoing - Account follow-up (up and cross-selling, etc.) Order management and sales monitoring

SPANCO enables organizations to display sales figures with KPI's (Key Performance Indicator as well as to generate, manage and convert leads into customers. Areas of difficulty which may arise in terms of the various phases will be clearly highlighted, so that corrective action will be all the more effective and thus improve the performance of your sales department.

Following this method will help sales people to bring more sales to their company and improve their sales skills. Many organizations insist on this method to their sales people to increase sales. My organization follows this method and found very useful in bringing more customers and sharping the sales skills of the employees.

Marketing vs Sales

Two key aspects of a successful business are Sales and Marketing. Sometimes the difference between these two techniques is hard to understand. However, though they do go hand in hand, Sales and Marketing are completely different.A very simplistic way of looking at Sales and Marketing is: doing a good job in Marketing can lead to Sales. Marketing is what makes customers aware of the product. Customers buy products and the company makes Sales.

Marketing involves focusing on the people who are most likely to buy your product and making sure that they know it's available.The marketing process also involves identifying products and services that people need or want and producing the product. From there, it's a matter of promotion. Marketing includes public relations and advertising and works best if you can get the product to people in different forms. Marketing can include product placement in a store, brochures and advertisements in newspapers, magazines or on the television or radio. All these Marketing activities inform people about the product, so they can go to the store and buy it and you can make Sales or a profit.

Sales involve getting the product off the shelf or the cart and into the hands of the customer. The customer must decide if they want it and then, buy it. It's even better if they keep coming back for more. Sales are typically a one-on-one experience. You work with one person or a company representative to convince that person to buy the product. To do this you might Demonstrate that the product works or that it's beneficial to the company or person and Show that the product meets a need or a desire or makes their lives easier or better.

So in short Sales pushes an already existing product and marketing recognizes a need to be filled and creates a product to serve that need.

Quality in Customer Service

During my PG i participated in a paper presentation Seminar in one of the B-School in Chennai.The topic of the Paper presentation was "Quality in Customer service".The central theme of my presentation was to show how important is customer service for every organization and what all benefits it would bring about in an organization.

"Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company," --Erwin Frand.
The PPT went on with these quotes.In today's market,Quality in customer service from a customer point of view is “a function of how well an organization is able to constantly and consistently exceed the needs of the customer."

At today’s prices, people don’t want bikes that aren’t perfect,houses made with inferior materials, stores with rude employees, or airlines and restaurants that provides poor services.And while most customers don’t bother to complain, they simply take business to other companies which offer the service they expect or products of better quality.

I proposed Customer relationship Management(CRM) as a tool to improve customer service.CRM is the business strategy that aims to understand, anticipate, manage and personalize the needs of an organization's current and potential customers.In simple its all about customer management.A successful and effective CRM programme results in increase of Customers Lifetime Value of any organization.

Pantaloons uses CRM as a main to tool to get more customers and to make existing customers into loyal customers.It also stays in touch with its loyal customers through Mailers, SMSes E-mails and Telephone informing them about the developments and promotions.

CRM plays a key role in the service and sales & marketing areas also. It empowers organizations by providing multi-channel customer interactions, intelligent call routing, automatic activity updating, interaction history tracking, service plan management, customer satisfaction tracking and portal integration.

HCL which use CRM as a tool to improve the business and have valuable customers for a long is a model for CRM implementation.HCL understands that effective loyalty management systems cement business relationships and help to retain existing customers.

Customer relationship management is essential to compete effectively in today’s marketplace. The more effective an organization can use the information about its customers to meet their needs the more profitable it will be. The route to a successful business requires that it understands its customers and their requirements, and CRM is the essential guide.”

The PPT went on with the above ideas and there was huge appreciation from the audience which made me feel satisfied and happy with what i have done.

Customer Satisfaction

In today's global economy,customers are still the lifeblood of any business.In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy.Without customers to purchase a company products or services,it certainly won't have an income for long time.Even we are customers,we buy products which satisfies our needs and also the one we feel worth for the money we pay for buying that product.Once we are satisfied with a particular product,we become regular uses of it and buy them regularly.

A Company has to provide a product or service that someone needs or wants.It should target the segment that will be more satisfied with the products it produces,rather then targeting a segment which are not that much satisfied with the product.By having a goal of finding good customers, giving them great products and following up with excellent customer service, a company can find that many of them will turn into active feeders for its business.

There is an established principle in the business world called the 80/20 Rule. In the majority of successful companies, 80% of its revenue will be generated from only 20% of its satisfied customers.The simple road map that i feel for journey to success for any company is paved with quality products, personal attention and superior service.

Some of the benefits i predicted from satisfied customers are

1.Satisfied customers tend to continue to buy from the same company.
2.It costs much less to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones.
3.Satisfied customers tell others about their positive experiences, while dissatisfied customers tell even more people about their negative experience.

So Satisfied Customers = Growth of an organization.

Sales Job

In the present situation ,many companies seemed to recruit more people for sales function.Because in this recession salesman play a major role for promoting the company products and services.Before only graduates were recruited by companies for selling function,but now things have changed ,MBA's are recruited for hardcore sales function.

Yesterday in the morning ,someone rang my home calling bell .when i opened the door a surprise and shock was waiting for me.A guy started saying "I am a MBA graduate and i am here to sell a educational product for kids".I told him we don't have any kids in our home,he can leave and closed the door.I felt bad for that guy because i don't think an MBA degree is needed for such a sales job.

The first thing that people ask in a sales/Marketing interview is "Do you have a bike".For corporate sales MBA's can be used but for consumer sales a graduate is enough.Taking a sales role is not a easy task.People in sales have to travel a lot and face many issues with customers.

A salesman needs good persuasion skills,communication skills,selling skills and people skills.Its very hard to survive in a sales job,it needs more patience and high stress handling within oneself.A friend of mine ,who got placed in a well known FMCG company as Area sales manager ,left his job in 2 months saying ,its not the job for an MBA.The job role was like this,he will be given a area and he as to go get orders from the shops in that area and supply the products to those shops with few people under him.

If a person is able to stay in a sales job for 2 years continuously,he as a very bright future after that.A salesman can earn money more than his salary ,if he shows more productivity than expected.The growth in a sales career is fast and one of the hot jobs were you can earn more in later years.Taking a sales role purely depends on the attitude and will of the person to survive.The more challenging a job is,more money you earn and grow fast.If anyone in interested in traveling and meeting new people,sales job is the right choice.

Ways to bring Business to your new company

Today not a brisk day for me. woke up late by a call from one of my friend,who called me for a help in his assignment.He was asked to prepare a one page report on ways to bring business to your company.I gave him few suggestions which are as follows,

1) Asses the market opportunities and industry that need your services.

2) Indentify companies which use and need your products, services through web.

3) Create a data base of the companies which need your products and services (Address, telephone no, email ids etc)

4) Prepare a PPT about the company and the services it offers in a professional way and mail across various identified companies.

5) Call the companies and fix a business appointment with the Business Head or CEO to explain the products and services you offer(in case of foreign clients)

6) For local clients, call and fix a appointment and meet them in person and make a presentation about your company

7) Differentiate your products and services from other company offerings, convince the client and close the business deal.

8) Internet advertising would be a major promotion tool to attract more clients.

9) Get feedbacks from clients as what they need from the service and product you offer and convert it into business requirements.


These were some of the suggestions i gave him for his assignment,Kindly give a feedback about the suggestions