This document discusses adaptive selling and relationship building. It describes standardized, outlined, and customized presentations salespeople can use. A customized presentation that is tailored to a customer's specific needs illustrates adaptive selling. It also discusses the importance of sales knowledge, including product knowledge, knowledge about customers and sales situations, and how to retrieve knowledge using systems. Training programs can help salespeople develop adaptive selling skills by learning to adjust their communication styles based on a customer's social style.

1. ADAPTIVE SELLING FOR RELATIONSHIP
BUILDING

2. Reporter:

3.  STANDARD MEMORIZED PRESENTATION
 OUTLINED PRESENTATION
 CUSTOMIZED PRESENTATION

4.  Also called a canned
presentation, is a
completely memorized
sales talk.

5. • Is a prearranged presentation that usually includes a
standard introduction, standard answers to common
objections raised by customers, and a standard
method for getting the customer to place an order.

6. • Is a written and/or oral presentation based on a
detailed analysis of the customers needs.

7.  Salespeople practice adaptive selling when
they react to different sales situations by
changing their sales behaviours.
 The customized presentation illustrates
adaptive selling because the presentation is
tailored to the specific needs of the
customer.
 Selecting the appropriate sales strategy for a
sales situation and making adjustments
during the interaction are crucial to
successful selling.

8.  Knowledge enables the
salesperson to build self
confidence, gain the
buyer’s trust, satisfy
customer’s needs, and
practice adaptive selling.
 PRODUCT AND COMPANY KNOWLEDGE
 KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SALES SITUATIONS AND CUSTOMERS
 HOW TO CREATE KNOWLEDGE
 RETRIEVING KNOWLEDGE FROM THE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYS

9. Effective salespeople
need to know how
products are made, what
services are provided
with the products, how
the products relate to
other products, and
how the products can
satisfy customers’
needs.

10.  Equally important with product and company
knowledge is detailed information about the
different types of sales situations and
customers salespeople may encounter.

11. 1. One source of knowledge would be top salespeople in
the company you work for. Some firms will collect
and share this information with you.
2. Salespeople also create knowledge by getting
feedback from sales managers. Diagnostic feedback
provides information about what you’re doing right
and wrong, instead of just whether you made a sale.
3. Other sources of knowledge include the Web,
company sales manuals and newsletters, sales
meetings, plant visits, and business and trade
publications.

12.  Salespeople store
much of their acquired
knowledge in their
memory, and as such,
retrieval is merely
accessing information
in that memory.

13. Reporter

14. A TRAINING PROGRAM FOR BUILDING ADAPTIVE SELLING SKILLS

15.  Is a popular training program that companies
use to help salespeople adapt their
communication styles

16.  ASSERTIVENESS
 The degree to which people have opinions about
issues and publicly make their positions clear to
others. Assertive people speak out, make strong
statements and have a take-charge attitude.
 RESPONSIVENESS
 Based on how emotional people tend to get in
social in situations. Responsive people readily
express joy, anger, and sorrow.

19.  DRIVERS
 EXPRESSIVES
 AMIABLES
 ANALYTICALS

20.  High on assertiveness
and low on
responsiveness.
 Drivers have learned to
work with others only
because they must do
so to get the job done,
not because they enjoy
people

21.  High on assertiveness
and high on
responsiveness. Warm,
approachable, intuitive
and competitive,
expressives view
power and politics as
important factors in
their quest for personal
rewards and
recognition.

22.  Are low on
assertiveness and high
on responsiveness.
Close relationships and
cooperation are
important to amiables.

23.  Low on assertiveness
and low on
responsiveness. They
like facts, principles
and logic.

24. LOW RESPONSIVENESS
S
LOW ASSERTIVENESS
AL
HIGH ASSERTIVENESS
S
TI
C
V ER
LY D RI
A NA
V
ES
L ES SI
V
IAB RE
S
AM EX
P
HIGH RESPONSIVENESS

26.  SUGGESTIONS FOR MAKING MORE
ACCURATE ASSESSMENTS
 Concentrate on the customer’s behaviour and
disregard how you feel about the behaviour. Don't let
your feelings about the customer or thoughts about
the customer’s motives cloud your judgement.
 Avoid assuming that specific jobs or functions are
associated with a social style.
 Test your assessments. Look for clues and
information that may suggest you may have
incorrectly assessed a customer’s social style.

27. Reporter:

28.  The effort people make to increase the
productivity of relationship by adjusting to
the needs of the other party.

29. Less Versatile More Versatile
 Here is a comparison
of behaviours of more Limited ability to Able to adopt to
adopt to others’ others’ needs
and less versatile needs
people. Specialists Generalists
Well-defined Broad interests
interests
Sticks to principles Negotiable issues
Predictable Unpredictable
Looks at one side of Looks at many sides
an issue of an issue

30.  The social style matrix developed by Merrill and Reid
is one of several sales training methods based o
customer classification schemes.
 An expert system is a computer program that mimics
a human expert. The program contains the
knowledge, rules, and decision, processes employed
by experts and then uses these elements to solve
problems, suggest strategies, and provide advice
similar to that of an expert.
 Training methods such as the social style matrix and
expert systems are simply a first step in developing
knowledge for practicing adaptive selling

32.  Adaptive selling uses one of the unique properties of
personal selling as a marketing communication tool.
Extensive knowledge of customer and sales situation
types is a key ingredient in effective adaptive selling
 To be effective, salespeople need considerable knowledge
about everything concerned with their product.
Experienced salespeople organize customer knowledge
into categories.
 The social style matrix illustrates the concept of
developing categorical knowledge to facilitate adaptive
selling.
 The social style matrix is one example of categorical
scheme salespeople can use to improve their knowledge
and adaptability.