- Personal Selling Basics: The role of personal selling, Attitude toward selling, Benefits of selling, Selling links the company to its customers, Selling offers an attractive career.
- Learning to Sell; The Job of Personal Selling: Traits and tasks, The professional salesperson, Characteristics and obligations of salespeople, Duties and tasks differ.
- Special Types of Selling: Selling to organizational buyers, Features of buying and selling, Nature of organizational buyers, Value analysis, Securing and opening organizational sales interviews, Selling to a group.
- Selling to Ultimate Consumers: Duties of retail salespeople, Sales personality, Information needed by retail salespeople, Steps in retail selling, Post-sale behavior, Building sound customer relationships, The problem of returned goods, Techniques of self-management.
- Knowledge about Product, Price, and Distribution: Company background, the industry, company features, Product knowledge, Product research, Terms of sale, Product attributes, Company support of the product, Distribution system, Wholesalers, retailers, Salespeople and the distribution system, The salesperson's roles.
- Propelling Activities: Prospecting for customers, Techniques for prospecting, Buying influences, Need and use of prospect information, Types of prospect information, Sources of prospect information, Interns of groups' and entire territory.
- Planning the Sales Presentation: Steps in selling, The preapproach, Five buying decisions, Adopting the prospect’s point of view, Planning for the first 'No', Canned presentation and story plan.
- The Selling Process: Securing and opening the sales interview, Securing an interview, The approach, Selling is solving the buyer's problems, The first moment of the interview, Common first call difficulties.
- Delivering the Sales Presentation: The advantage-proof-action technique, Mechanics of delivering the presentation, Difficulties in sales presentation, Selling against strong competition.
- Demonstration: Psychological value of demonstrating, When and what to demonstrate, Necessity of advance preparation, Principles of effective demonstration, Demonstration instructions, Showmanship in demonstration.
- Answering Objections: Art of frictionless disagreement, Coping with prospect hostility, Why prospects offer opposition, Attitude toward objections, Excuses versus objections, Principles of handling objections, When to handle objections, Preventing objections.
- Closing the Sale: Prospect's attitude toward close, When to close the sale, Techniques of closing sale, Post-sale activities.
- Basic Selling Responsibilities: Building sound customer relationships, Importance and scheduling calls, Building repeat business, Increasing volume of accounts, Inactive accounts, Securing customer support, Influencing customer's merchandising policies, Meeting with customers, Dealing with customer complaints, Cancellation and returned goods, Regaining lost customers, Handling credit and collection problems, Building goodwill.
- Self-Management Essentials: Techniques for routing scheduling, Telephone as time saver, Record keeping, Self-evaluation.
- Legal, Ethical, and Social Responsibilities: Legal responsibilities, Law affecting salesperson, Applying the laws, Ethical responsibilities, Improving the ethics of salespeople, Social responsibilities.
- Sales Promotion: Managing sales promotion activities, Objectives, Relationship with other marketing mix elements, Factors influencing the use and form of sales promotion, Evaluation, Sales promotion to consumers (POP, coupons, premiums, sampling, contests and sweepstakes, consumer deals, advertising specialties, packaging), Sales promotion to dealers and sales personnel (trade deals and allowances, cooperative advertising, contests, sales meetings, sales brochures, trade shows and exhibits).