Personal Selling $$ Professional approach

Background Information:

$$Keep Fit$$ is a medium$-$sized outlet exclusively dealing in exercising

equipments$/$machines and fitness accessories and sometimes in sports equipments

also. It has $27$ sales persons employed under it$.$ Owners of the outlet $$ an active

middle$-$aged couple have several contacts abroad through which they place orders

for the necessary and required equipments. Once an order is placed for particular

equipment, it takes atleast $2$ weeks for the equipment to reach the outlet. Secondly,

the sales force is involved in cold calls, constantly checking upon new orders from

the existing customers and getting new customers to place orders for these

equipments from in and around the city. Sometimes, they travel to other nearby cities

seeking orders and new customers.

Some of the equipments that Keep Fit sells are $$

$$ Cardio equipments such as Treadmills, Stair climbers, Steppers, Bikes, Ellipticals,

Rowers, so on$.$

$$ Strength equipments such as Weight benches, Power racks and varieties, different

kinds of Weight machines which is supplied as per customer$$s requirements, lifting

accessories, home gym systems, and other machines.

$$ Fitness accessories such as pedometers, ankle and wrist weights, jump ropes,

stretch mats, hand grips, exercise balls, pull and push up bars, so on$.$

$$ Sports accessories such as soccer balls, volleyballs, basketballs, poles, boxing

gloves, track pants and such other stuff if at all there is customer demand or they

have placed such orders.

The owners have already realized the growth potential of these

equipments$/$machines after analyzing the following:

a$)$ Since most people are becoming health and fitness conscious, there is lot of

demand but supply is comparatively low.

b$)$ Due to heavy work pressures and IT related jobs that require people to sit in front

of their computer systems for long, it has resulted into high demand for creating and

maintenance of gyms in the companies and at the workplaces.

c$)$ The affluent class or groups especially celebrities and sports stars don$$t mind

purchasing and owning these equipments in their homes, the objective being

creation of a personal gym at home.

d$)$ Fitness centers, gymnasiums and sports clubs are increasing in number and so is

the demand for the exercising equipments and machines.

e$)$ Encouragement given to different sports requires the sports men and women to

use such equipments and therefore, they have to be provided with such resources

so as to participate in national or international sports events like Olympics.

Two more salespersons were recently recruited and selected by the owners. After

the training and several exposures to the sales practices adopted by experienced

salespersons, these two salespersons were ready for the actual job.

The first salesperson namely Mr$.$ Jagan Das is hard$-$working and efficient in his work.

It was observed in the training programme that he was alert to the situations and

environment around him. But, at the same time he had a weakness of listening a lot

to other people$$s opinions and not contributing his thoughts or ideas. However, he

was enrolled in a short$-$term communication course to improve his language skills

and expressing his thoughts. The second salesperson namely Mr$.$ Tarun Mehra is an

enthusiastic and determined chap. He likes to share ideas and given the time, he

would talk his way out. In the training programme, he asked lot of questions and after

receiving answers would again question about why and how of things. His only

weakness was his tendency to get over$-$enthusiastic about things and situations that

he would forget about existing situation or problem.

In the first few months, Jagan and Tarun were getting along fine as they were

assigned the same sales territory. Sometimes, they would go together to collect

orders and even dispatch orders to the customers. Together, they were able to deal

with complicated clients and achieve higher sales targets than what was assigned to

them.

Lately, the owners observed small fights happening between Jagan and Tarun. They

were not sure as to what caused the disagreements that led to fights but eventually,

the couple decided that the salesmen needed to sort it out by themselves. On

Jagan$$s request, their sales territories were separated and now, Jagan and Tarun

had to deal with different customers at different locations.

After Reading the Background Information, analyse the following two situations

and answer the questions given at the end:$-$

Situation $1$:

Jagan is at the outlet$$s veranda listening to how another sales person handled a

customer$$s complaint. He receives a call from one of the old customers of the outlet.

The telephonic conversation goes as follows:

Customer: $$From $$Shape$-$up$$ Gym, I am Raghav speaking... Two months back, I

purchased this treadmill from you for our gymnasium located at the city$$s east and

now it is causing some prob