3:3:8 marketing action plans [a relational sales process]

Throughout the e-book we have argued that a marketing philosophy has a focus on profitable exchange relationships, that consumers wish the buying process to be a pleasurable experience, that customers reward or punish organisations depending on their evaluation of satisfaction.

Learning objectives of this chapter. After completion of this chapter students should have a better idea of the relational sales process and how this sales process is more aligned with the marketing concept, a marketing philosophy and the 9 key objectives of marketing practitioners.

Directions: In this module, we revisit Relationship Thinking and explore a relationship-focussed sales process, we discuss how it differs from a transactional sales process, detail the benefits of creating quality interactions with prospects to populate the salespipeline, highlight the importance of asking questions during the sales process, and outline the four key tasks of a relational sales process.

In this chapter, we will ‘reverse engineer’ the sales process with the goal to identify and improve the components of the sales process. Most sales training is built on a production or selling philosophy, however, a relational sales process is congruent with a marketing philosophy. Sometime ago, McMurry (1961) observed that there have been few advancements in the art of selling in 100 years. More recently, Fogel, Hoffmeister, Rocco, and Struck (2012) suggest the situation still remains dire and perhaps one reason is that the sales process is given little attention in MBA programs or universities in general.

After observing and consulting with a number of relationship-focused salespeople and sales managers and then relating it to marketing and professional communication theory the following is proposed as a sales process that is consistent with the marketing concept and adopting a marketing philosophy.