A Case Study of the Improvement of Sales Representatives’ Communication Skills Through Training at Yonglong Company.doc

a case study of the improvement of sales representatives communication skills through training at yonglong companysubmitted by wang yi hanstudent id number w2006a4502b0009supervised by yang wei minga paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of bachelor of artsthe institute of online educationbeijing foreign studies university北京外国语大学网络教育学院学士学位论文诚信声明本人郑重声明： 所呈交的学士学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的成果。论文所涉及的项目为本人亲自负责或者参与实施的项目。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。本人完全了解本声明的法律结果由本人承担。学士学位论文作者签名：王怡涵 日期： 2009 年 12 月 28 日摘 要 永龙公司是进口阀门代理商，产品涉及电力、化工、冶金等行业，能提供专业的设计、选型、销售和一体化服务，为企业降低能源消耗和减少环境排放贡献力量，2008年公司迎来了比较好的发展机遇，实现了1000多万的销售业绩。 然而今年，该公司经历了最困难的一年，销售持续下滑，连续10个月都没有大的订单，开始以为是金融危机和缺乏有销售经验的工程师造成的。虽然金融危机已经有所缓和，但公司的销售困境仍然没有任何起色。作为该公司的总经理助理，作者经过研究认为需要增添新的销售精英，经过慎重挑选，招聘了数名自称有多年销售经验的员工，数月后，事与愿违，公司的销售气象仍然很暗淡。 2009年10月至11月，经过员工内部问卷调查、网络会议讨论、swot分析、电话采访和客户回访等方法，作者认为原因主要表现在销售员在沟通方面存在很大的问题。销售员与客户沟通方面有很大的障碍，他们不知道如何挑起与销售有关的话题，更不能把话题顺利的进行下去，话题经常在不足三分钟内就被迫结束，客户也纷纷反映，我们的销售员不能准确的把产品特点表达出来，这严重影响了产品的推广。 基于员工管理以及产品推广方面的原理和实践，本论文提出假设，认为员工的专业素质及沟通技巧与该公司对销售员进行培训和教育的能力及力度密切相关。本论文通过设计一个近期和长期的销售员培训计划，力图在短期内帮助新老员工提高专业知识水平，学习如何掌握与客户进行有效沟通的技巧，从而在根本上改变销售局势暗淡的现状。 经过为期4周的销售员短期培训,本公司12月份销售业绩有所回升，客户满意度有所提高，达到了项目设计预期的初步效果。 关键词： 沟通技巧 ；培训计划 ；销售业绩；专业素质abstractyonglong company is a imported valve agent, which brings a broad range in the power station, chemical industry, metallurgy industry in henan. they can provide high-quality engineering design, selection, sales and maintenance services and intelligent system solutions that improve utility performance, lower energy consumption, and reduce environmental emissions. they made significant achievements in 2008, completing a 10 million in sales. but this year, they have experienced a hard year due to huge sales decreases, up to now the difficult situation still has not improved. the leader thought that it is because of the financial storm all over the world, and the other reason might be a shortage of experienced sales engineers. while the financial crisis has eased, but the companys sales remained unchanged. as a general manager assistant, the author was asked for advertising for new employees, when some new staffs stayed for months in the company, they were expected a huge sale order, but unfortunately they all were not incompetent, though they all had several years experiences, the low situation remained unchanged.october.2009 to november.2009, after the staff interior questionnaire survey, the network conference discusses, the swot analysis, the telephone and face-face interview and so on, the author thought that the sales had a big problem in communications. the reason is the reps couldnt communicate with clients smoothly, they did not know what subjects they should talk about and how to open the beginning of the sales conversation, they could not make the conversation smoothly, often forced to close down in three minutes. at the same time, the author telephoned and visited their customers, all the answers sound the same, the reps couldnt provide detailed or even adequate information about the products.this paper presents a hypothesis that the staffs professional qualities and communication skill with the companys sales staff training and education are closely related to the ability and strength. in this paper, through designing a short-term and a long-term sale staff training program seeks to help new employees in the short term to improve the professional level of knowledge, learning how to master effective communication with customer skill, so as to fundamentally change the sales situation in the bleak status.after 4 week-long training, the sales result rose, the customer degree of satisfaction improved, this company in december achieved the item design anticipated preliminary effect.key words: communication skills; staff training; sales order；professional qualitytable of contentspages1. introduction 12. problem identification and analysis2 2.1 project problems2 2.2 problem analysis33. project rationale64. project design 8 4.1 objective and hypothesis8 4.2 planning activities95. project implementation176. results and discussion18 6.1 results 18 6.2 discussion207. conclusion 23bibliography25appendix i. customer telephone survey questionnaire26appendix ii. staff questionnaire27appendix iii. form i. online meeting discussion 29 form ii. training evaluation form31 form iii. online training survey31 7.2 discussionfa case study of the improvement of sales representatives communication skills through training at yonglong company1. introduction yonglong company is a imported valves agent, which brings a broad range in the power station, chemical industry, metallurgy industry in henan. we can provide high-quality engineering design, selection, sales and maintenance services and intelligent system solutions that improve utility performance, lower energy consumption, and reduce environmental emissions.as a general manager assistant, my main work is to write the tender for the sales department, and i am also responsible for getting in touch with the china office of foreign companies, so as to coordinate issues related to our tracking projects, such as asking for these project authorizations, qualification documents about their company, and the quotation about their products. sometimes i am asked to go on-site bid. we made significant achievements in 2008, completing a 10 million in sales. but this year, we have experienced a hard year due to huge sales decreases, up to now the difficult situation still has not improved. our leader thought that it is because of the financial storm all over the world, and the other reason might be a shortage of experienced sales engineers. so i was asked for advertising for new employees, when some new staffs stayed for months in our company, we expected a huge sale order, but unfortunately they all were not incompetent, though they all had several years experiences, the low situation remained unchanged.under this situation, our leader asked me to look for the cause, so i began to examine the sales department, talking with our reps, they all told me they did not know what subjects they should talk about and how to open the beginning of the sales conversation, they could not make the conversation smoothly, often forced to close down in three minutes. at the same time, i telephoned and visited our customers, all the answers sound the same, the reps couldnt provide detailed or even adequate information about our products.so my project focused on how to improve the reps professional communication skills in dealing with customers. based on the hypothesis that good eloquence can stimulate the desire of customers to buy. one-month training was launched to design from october 10th, 2009 to november 10th, 2009. a series of activities was planned and carried out, such as, compiling products information in ppt, inviting technical engineers and inviting professional outside trainers, purchasing computer, overhead project, and digital camera and so on.before putting the plan into practice, i also devised some measures to control and manage potential risks.the total cost of the project was 18,535 yuan. it included purchasing computer, overhead project, digital camera, renting storage room, and etc.in the whole process of this project, i adopted those helpful techniques and methods which john hilton introduced in his book “practical business project and proposal (2001)”. scientific research methods of customer survey, such as focus group, face-to-face interviews, and swot analysis were used in the identification and analysis of the problems. flowchart and several other methods were also adopted in the design, implementation and evaluation of the project. within one month after holding the training, the project brought a little sales increase, the value involved in the new contracts signed was 730,000 rmb. it hopes to do more in the future.2. problem identification and analysis2.1 project problemsthe problem i am facing is that our reps have poor communication skills in dealing with customers. 2.2 problem analysis1) situation analysis of yonglong companyl physical resourcesyonglong company was founded in 2000, and buys an area of 340 square meters in the centre of zhengzhou as our office, with convenient transportation we can arrive at our customers companies quickly. we have advanced oa system, which makes us record and maintain client contact data. l human resourcesthe company has 11 qualified staff working in 4 departments, such as management department, sales department, finance department and the office. miss peng is a receptionist and office worker at the front desk, who receives and sends fax everyday and deals with the office of the other chores. the sales departments responsibility is product marketing, all the reps are college graduates who have several years experiences.l financial resourcesunder the influence of national policy, the imported valves increase in demand, the annual revenue of our company reached rmb 10 million in 2008. we reserve a percentage of its yearly revenue for business improvement. the budget for this year is rmb 100,000 and will be used to improve the companys management level .the budget also covers the increasing business and staff training expenses in 2009.l pest analysisenergy conservation law of the peoples republic of china , the peoples republic of china presidential decree no. 77th said that “energy-using units shall, according to the principles of rational energy use and strengthen energy conservation management, develop and implement energy efficiency programs and energy-saving technical measures to reduce energy consumption.”the state encourages industrial enterprises to adopt high efficiency, energy-efficient equipment, using combined heat and power, waste heat and pressure utilization, use of clean coal and advanced technologies to monitor and control.strengthening of national large-scale coal bases and thermal power bases, energy is the basis for economic and social development and an important supporting condition.vigorously develop new energy and renewable energy sources to build an adequate supply, reasonable structure, clean energy accounted for the main body has a certain capacity of external inputs of energy supply system. in 2010 the provinces power generation installed capacity reached 45 million kilowatts or more.corresponding governments call, most power generation and chemical industry vigorously carry out the new project construction, the old project technical reconstruction and energy-saving investment, which bring us more sales opportunities.to cope with the rapid demand of the imported valves, we focus on the problem how to improve the reps communication skills, otherwise, the big market would be left for other competitors.2) needs analysis of yonglong companyas a business ultimate goal is to reap profits by providing satisfying products to customers, knowing the real needs of customers is crucial. so at the very least we should do a separate analysis of the customers needs. i have defined my problem to be communication skills within the area of sales promotion. so i conducted a series of surveys among our reps and our customers. since there are only four sales representatives in our company, i used personal interviews to collect feedback from them. for our customers, i used focus groups. first, i would like to mention the valuable lessons we learned from the interviews with our four reps, they pointed out how difficult it was to communicate with our customers, who are sometimes unwilling to talk with them. some of them specified certain topics that they would like to discuss, for example, handling customers challenges. the interviews made us realize the necessity of training in communication skills and also helped us to better understand the reps needs and wants, which is essential in finding solutions for their respective problems.second, our customers were divided into three focus groups. the feedback from the customers revealed that most of our reps failed to arouse their interest during conversation. half of them neglected listening and were unable to identify customers needs and wants. one third of them failed to provide details on the benefits of the product. in general, the results showed our reps have serious problems in communicating with customers.3） swot profilebased on the results of situation analysis and needs analysis of the company we now come up with the following swot profile:strengthsweaknesses friendly staffs professionally qualified general manager excellent location elegant working environment advanced office software perfect office furniture good personal connections with customers humanistic management style less professional managers traditional family enterprise workers limited ability to keep track of customers workers limited ability to seek sales opportunities declining profit due to lost customers agent limitations negative work attitude of most staffsopportunitiesthreats increasing demand for mechanical and electrical equipment import duties reduction and exemption for some of the imported mechanical and electrical equipment national policy to encourage enterprises to develop power station construction and energy conservation and optimization relating to energy consumption unit. the customers easily ask for the quotations on the same products due to the high degree information. customers enjoy switching partners cost of utilities and rent is rising non-honest the imported valve manufacturers. strong competitors have experienced sales team, new style of management and marketing strategy hard agent market3. project rationalesome books and articles on communication skills can be easily found. for example, a few effective communication with customers tips (li and yu，2006) suggests several important communication skills points form their book. yuan, huabing, analyzed the importance of language on business in his writing speechless can not do sales well (2008.10). liu you, introduced that a silver tongue can help you win customers, from his book marketing eloquence from carnegie, china city press. and wang kai grabe order with your mouth, enterprise management press. hu, jintao, (2007.10)energy conservation law of the peoples republic of china，the rationales on which my project will be based are as follows:sales are actually to maintain a constant communication with the customers work, who communicates with customers more effectively, who is one of the outstanding persons, otherwise, it can be a failure there. so, how to win customers, how to respond to customer refusal, how to make love to your customers and your companys products? we need to learn how to communicate with customers more effectively.there are several problems in the process of sales communication: li, jianjun and yu, huixia, (2006), a few effective communication with customers tips, chinese textile press.first, non-sense purpose, for example, what is the purpose of the first visit? we call on the general purpose of the initial visit is to introduce products and to establish contact. this can be counted as a purpose, but not clear enough, why? simply, because you introduce a product to give customers what kind of impression is uncertain, if the right impression you are unsure, then your introduction is meaningless. it goes into customers left ear and out their right, simply not reaching their mind. so we should change the purpose at the first visit to the forms as this: make customers for our products or services have a clear understanding of the special aspects, and cause his or her interest.clear objectives is a prerequisite for success, so every time we communicate with customers in the process should be to set itself the goal of pointing to the stage of the ultimate goal .second, liking shut customers mouth, many sales staff always talk on and on , whenever the customers want to say something ,they will try their best to keep customers listening. why? in their viewpoint, a smooth tongue is a sign of success. however, their behavior may block up the customers mouth, but not the customers heart, the customers already have their own idea when nod frequently facing the sales talkative behavior.for the sales staff, they see only the customers surface, nod, but did not observe changes in their psychological.in sales, it does not rely on language to block the mouth of customers, allow customers to be completely convinced and nod from their deep heart can make a real deal that is win-win situation.learning how to listen is a good way of communication with customers, listening is a very effective way to interact with customers, to allow customers to speak their real sound, only in this way can we understand the customers real needs and the factors that prevent us from closing,listening is an important communication skills in modern business communication, it not only reflects a persons self-cultivation but also to facilitate the means to achieve the common purposecommunication in the modern peoples lives, play an important role, it not only requires us to dare to actively communicate and to be good at communication, not only good at words, but also a good listener. therefore, we work and live, we should learn the necessary communication skills, but also for facilitating our work life.czinkota & kotabe (2001) observed: consumers do not approach each buying decision with conven