MKTG 420 Week 7 Course Project

MKTG 420 Week 7 Course Project

The objective of this assignment is to gain experience applying the interactive selling process by planning for and preparing a formal sales presentation to meet the needs of a customer. This assignment will help you to apply and integrate all of the Terminal Course Objectives for Marketing 420 Salesmanship.

• Your completed assignment will be a formal sales presentation that will be written up in a paper of approximately 10 to 12 pages in length (this would be roughly 1 page per area included in the report), 10 point font, double-spaced. You will select the topic, which will include deciding on the product or service that you are selling and describing your customer scenario. The submitted assignment should include a cover page, table of contents, introduction, body, summary or conclusion and works cited.
• Even though this is not a scientific-type writing assignment, and is mostly creative in nature, references are still very important.  If you access other sources, such as websites or publications to prepare the assignment, then these should be listed on the last page titled “Works Cited”. At the very minimum, the text and online course resources should be cited.
• All DeVry University policies are in effect including the plagiarism policy.
• Final presentations are due during Week 7 of this course.
• Any questions about this assignment may be discussed in the weekly Q&A Discussion topic.
• This paper is worth 200 total points and will be graded on quality of topic, quality of content, grammar and sentence structure, use of citations.

The following are the best practices in preparing this assignment.

• Cover Page – Include the customer name for which you have prepared the presentation, your name and company /product name, and date.
• Table of Contents– List the sections of your assignment and the pages on which they are located.
• Format – Use a header on your paper. This will indicate you are introducing your paper.
• Body of Your Report – Use a header titled with the name of your project. Example: “Sales Presentation to Hotel X”. Each assignment should include the following sections:
  • Prospecting  – description of the customer (an organization, not an individual) and your company product or service. Some examples might be:
    • Customer is a construction firm and you sell heavy equipment
    • Customer is national chartered accountants firm and you sell office supplies or photocopiers
    • Customer is restaurant and you sell restaurant kitchen equipment
    • Customer is small retail grocery chain and you sell a line of frozen prepared organic entrees
  • Pre-Approach – include why you believe that your customer is a qualified prospect, some background information on the customer that you will use to build rapport and understand their needs, company information and data about their products and services. Your customer can be real or fictional.
  • Approach – discuss how you will get your prospect’s attention in the call and establish rapport– plan some ice breaker comments and anticipate “the problem,” i.e. customer needs. What is your presentation call objective? How will you verify whether the anticipated “problem” is correct?
  • Presentation – include 4 or 5 key points about your product/service that will address the customer’s needs, and effectively describe their features, advantages and benefits as directly related to customers’  needs. You may choose to use some of the following methods to present your solution: Demonstrations, customer testimonials, displays, samples and prospect participation. For this section of your assignment, you will include the actual presentation sales aids that you will use accompanied by a script.
  • Handling Objections – anticipate objections that may come up and describe how you will handle them. Some objections may relate to competition, price, product function, terms of the sale, etc.
  • Closing – plan to ask for the order- include a plan that describes how you will ask and what you will ask for.
  • Follow Up – include a plan of follow up after the call.
• Conclusion – Summarizing is similar to paraphrasing bur presents the gist of the material in fewer words than the original. An effective summary identifies the main ideas and major support points from the body of your assignment. Minor details are left out. Summarize the benefits of the ideas presented and how the presentation was effective.
• Work Cited – Use the citation format as specified in the Syllabus.

You  may want to review the following course information for guidance in preparing this assignment:

• Week 1: Interview with the Super Sales Rep: The Interactive Selling Process (ISP)
• Weeks 1-7: Test Your Knowledge Exercises that cover the elements of the Interactive Selling Process (ISP) (end of each week’s lecture)
• Week 4 Knockout Sales Presentation Tutorial
• Chapters 3, 4 and 5 in the text

This is a lengthy assignment that you should work on throughout the first seven weeks of the course. While there is no requirement to submit partial work prior to the due date, you  may want to set some milestones to keep yourself on track, as leaving this assignment until close to the due date could prove detrimental to your grade outcome.  Some suggested milestones follow:

Week 1 – Select your product or service and your customer
Week 2 – Fully describe your customer scenario – business, products and services, decision makers and potential needs.
Week 3 – Review the Week 1 Interview with the Super Sales Rep: The Interactive Selling Process (ISP) and the weeks 1 to 3 Test Your Knowledge exercises, the text readings (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) and think about how they will prepare you for the presentation.
Week 4 – Draft the Prospecting, Pre-Approach and Approach sections of the assignment and review the Knockout Sales Presentation Tutorial in the Week 4 Lecture.
Week 5 – Draft the Presentation section of the assignment
Week 6 – Review the Test Your Knowledge exercises at the end of the weeks 4, 5 and 6 lectures. Draft the Closing, Objection Handling and Follow-up sections of the Call.