This role-play/simulation provides an opportunity to apply the principles that serve as a foundation for the four broad strategic areas of personal selling: relationship, product, customer, and presentation strategies. The activities are designed to take you from “learning about” selling to “learning to do” selling.

You will start as a convention center sales and marketing department trainee. Your sales manager will supply you with memos that will assist you in learning about your product, competition, customers, and presentations. You will be supplied with many sales tools, including photos, awards, schedules, menus, floor plans, references, company policies, electronic sales proposal/product configurators (see pp. 429–446) and sales planning worksheets.

The first memo on p. 424 provides background information about your product, company, industry, and competition. As a trainee, your first sales and marketing assignment (see memo on p. 463) will be to create an electronic sales proposal and cover sales letter. This activity will give you an opportunity to apply information presented in Chapter 6.

After successfully communicating with your first customer and being promoted to account executive, you are instructed by your sales manager in memos on pp. 464–465 to plan and conduct your first face-to-face contact with another potential customer. The primary objective of this first contact is to establish a relationship with your customer.

The next memo from your sales manager on pp. 468–469 requests that you use your questioning skills to conduct a needs analysis involving the customer you previously contacted. Your customer, who was favorably impressed as a result of your first meeting, has called and requested a meeting to talk about an important convention being planned.

The last memo on pp. 472–473 assists you in creating and presenting a proposal that meets your customer’s needs. You will create a portfolio presentation using the awards, photos, price lists, menus, references, floor plans, and schedules provided.

You can access digital images of the pictures in this simulation by clicking on the www.pearsonhighered.com/manning website. You can also access an electronic sales proposal configuration to complete the customer service/sales memorandum 1 and sales memorandum 3 assignments.