Topics for Sales Meet 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Selling with Creativity Selling by Identifying Objectives The Beer Game 8 habits of Highly Successful Salespeople Negotiation Skills Role Play

1. Selling with Creativity Objective : To enable participants to understand the concept of Selling with Creativity Activity : The participants will have an opportunity to sell a half litre water bottle for Rs.200. All participants are given 10 minutes to think of a strategy. Post that, each participant will get a minute to sell the bottle to anyone not participating. The most creative person wins. Debrief : Sales professionals must be creative. Creativity is the process for coming up with new ideas that work for business. It involves solving customer problems, finding applications for products, meeting customer needs, addressing competition and prospecting for new customers. Needing creativity and being creative are two different things. Understanding the creative process makes it easier for people to tap into their potential and become successful. Back in prehistoric times, our brains needed to perceive danger to allow us to make decisions quickly and ensure survival. The quickest decision making process is to see an overall pattern rather than examine each individual piece of information. If a prehistoric person saw one tiger or another tiger, it didn t matter. Even though both were different, both meant run. We quickly learned that the tiger pattern large sharp teeth, loud roar and powerful legs meant danger. Patterns serve us well for survival, but they limit us for generating new ideas. Creativity gives us a process to break our thinking in patterns and develop new ideas. Our senses are overloaded with information from people, places and things. Only a small amount of the information we process is stored in our conscious memory. The remainder is stored in our subconscious memory. Our brains, then, are like our attics. There s a lot of stuff up there, but most of us have forgotten all the items stored. Our attic material is only useful if we can retrieve it. Creativity allows us to retrieve and use our treasure of stored information.

Creativity leads us to new ideas that would have been quite difficult to develop without association. There are lists of trigger words for technical and nontechnical problems. After the challenge is defined the creative process and association guide you to many possible solutions. There are many barriers to creativity. Believing there is only one right answer will diminish the ability to be creative. People tend to judge prematurely and reduce the number of generated ideas. It s been said that nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it s the only one you have. Challenge yourself to develop many answers, perhaps a second and a third right answer. Do this by rephrasing the problem and ask for many answers. These latter solutions might be even better than the first one generated. Believing in creativity enhances the ability to be creative. Learning other creative techniques will reinforce confidence in those abilities. Esther Dyson in her book Release 2.0 wrote that in the future, Employees will be valued for what they can produce, not for what they have produced. Most successful will be those who can design innovations to help the company get or stay ahead. Employees will increasingly need to be good at thinking. She speaks of being creative. Salespeople who possess the skill of creativity, or generating new ideas for their companies and their customers, will be the most successful in the future. 2. Selling by Identifying Objectives Objective : To introduce/reinforce the concept of Selling by Identifying Objectives Activity : y The room needs to be setup before the participants enter the room. y Randomly place the participant's chairs around the room. y Ask participants to stand in a line before entering the room. y Either whisper to each of them or give them a written instruction outlining what their task is that needs immediate implementation upon entering the room (there are 3 different tasks, so every 3rd person gets the same task)

The 3 tasks are: move all the chairs and place them in the middle of the room, move all the chairs and place them along the wall, move all the chairs and place them along the wall with the windows i.e. a different wall of the room. Let them at it.

People start moving the chairs around the room and soon realize that everyone has different objectives. This doesn t cause them to stop and start communicating to find a solution that allows everyone s objectives to be met. The underlying message is the need to communicate and negotiate a win-win solution for everyone. The game illustrates well how fixed our perspective, perception and motivations become, even with something as simple as where the middle of the room actually is for example, what it looks like and what it means to be there. 3. The Beer Game Objective : A fun game showcasing the selling skills and ability to develop strategies for selling. Activity : Cases of beer given to teams. Teams can be divided based on the number of total participants and time availability. The team to sell all bottles of beer earning the highest amount is the winner. Time Limit : 20 minutes

4. 8 habits of highly successful salespeople a. Be sold on yourself b. Develop and maintain a sales plan c. Understand the value of a strong first impression d. Pursue continuous training and learning e. Become an effective communicator f. Use time wisely. Become highly productive g. Realize that technology is a tool, not a crutch h. Creating a good Customer Experience 5. Negotiation Skills Role Play The Blue Banana Objective : To emphasize the concept of win-win negotiation Time : 20 minutes Activity : Refer to Activity outline annexure

Debrief : Ask for several negotiation outcomes from the group. What kind of outcome did they reach? Ask if others reached a different outcome, or a comparable outcome. The responses are likely to vary greatly. y Did anybody realize that win-win solution was possible. (A. Smith needs the peel, and P. Patel needs the flesh). Both parties could have gotten what they wanted without taking away from the other person. y Other questions include: o How this skill could be applied to real life activities? Conflicts with peers, parents, teachers, or etc. o Did you ever experience a disagreement with another person to later realize that it could have been resolved very quickly? Blue Banana Role Play Annexure Handout 1: Role for A. Smith You are Dr A. Smith, a chemist employed by a large multinational corporation. You are a scientist in the division that is in charge of developing technologies to deal with the hazardous environmental and health effects of oil spills on surroundings communities. Recently, there was a major oil spill in a community of 50,000 people in a region known for its agricultural productivity. In fact, this region is the bread basket of the country. The oil spill has contaminated the ground water and the soil, threatening the upcoming planting season and destroying the community s water supply. The president is contemplating declaring a state of emergency and evacuating the region, and has already appealed to NGOs and international organizations for emergency food supplies for his country. Your division has developed a synthetic chemical that is capable of neutralizing the hazardous effects of oil spills. The chemical was tested previously in a community where an oil spill contaminated the soil. One of the crucial ingredients used in this synthetic chemical is the peel of the extremely rare Blue Banana. Unfortunately, the Blue Banana harvest this year was extremely poor due to an infestation, and only 3,000 Blue Bananas were harvested. Manufacturing the chemical requires the peel of the Blue Banana your tests with other banana peels have not had the same results. You recently discovered that R. Rodriguez, a Latin American fruit exporter, has 2,000 of these bananas, in good condition, for sale. The peels from these 2,000 bananas would be enough to produce a substantial amount of the chemical; enough to salvage the upcoming planting season and to de-contaminate the ground water supply. You have also discovered that Dr P. Patel is also urgently seeking to buy these bananas from R. Rodriguez.

Dr Patel works for a rival pharmaceutical company that has refused to work with your division on matters of mutual scientific interest. In fact, their refusal to cooperate with your division delayed crucial research on this chemical. The president has approached your company for assistance. Your company has authorised you to approach Rodriguez to purchase 2,000 Blue Bananas. You have been informed Rodriguez will sell them to the highest bidder. You can bid as high as US$250,000 to obtain the peels of the 2,000 available bananas. Before approaching Rodriguez, you have decided to talk with Dr Patel so that you will not be prevented from purchasing the bananas. Handout 2: Role for P. Patel You are P. Patel, a research scientist working for a pharmaceutical firm. After many years of research, you have developed a promising vaccine for AIDS. It is still in the testing phase, but trials in small numbers of volunteers have produced very promising results. The AIDS pandemic affects millions each year, and your vaccine, although still relatively secret, is gaining publicity. Several governments of countries devastated by the effects of AIDS have contacted the company you work for about doing trials in their countries. Unfortunately, the vaccine is made from the flesh of the extremely rare Blue Banana. Only a small quantity (approximately 3,000) of these bananas were harvested last season, due to an infestation of bugs that destroyed much of the crop. No additional Blue Bananas will be available until the next season s harvest, and agricultural experts are again predicting a poor harvest. Delaying further trials on your vaccine means that your vaccine cannot undergo further testing, and delays the approval required for widespread distribution of the vaccine by several years. Preliminary trials have demonstrated your vaccine has no side effects for those that are vaccinated. Your company holds the patent on the vaccine, which is expected to be profitable when it is available to the public. Despite this, your company has already begun to develop a policy for distributing the vaccine to those who need it most but will not be able to afford the vaccine. You recently discovered that R. Rodriguez, a Latin American fruit exporter, has 2,000 of these bananas, in good condition, for sale. The flesh from these 2,000 bananas would be enough to produce a substantial amount of the vaccine; enough to make the vaccine available for further testing and make it possible to have approval for widespread distribution in one year, provided further trials go well.

You have also discovered that Dr A. Smith is also urgently seeking to buy these bananas from R. Rodriguez. Dr Smith works for a rival company that has refused to work with your company on matters of mutual scientific interest. In fact, their refusal to cooperate with you delayed crucial research on this vaccine. Your company has authorized you to approach Rodriguez to purchase 2,000 Blue Bananas. You have been informed Rodriguez will sell them to the highest bidder. You can bid as high as US$250,000 to obtain the flesh of the 2,000 available bananas. Before approaching Rodriguez, you have decided to talk with Dr Smith so that you will not be prevented from purchasing the bananas. (Adapted from Ugli Orange Exercise from the Harvard Programme on Negotiation)