Sales Plan

About this Assignment

Principles of Selling, as you have learned, focuses on developing customer relationships, building trust with customers and solving customer needs through development of a sales plan. You will prepare a sales plan for Contacts R Us, Inc., a fictitious provider of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for small to medium-sized businesses across the U. S. Your sales plan will be prepared specifically for the vice president for sales at Windy City Bank. Windy City Bank was recently formed through the merger of two regional financial institutions. Windy City Bank’s corporate offices are located in downtown Chicago. The VP’s combined staff after the merger has a client base consisting of over 3,500 small to medium-sized business customers. Windy City Bank’s sales and service staff members need to keep in periodic contact with each of their commercial clients. The VP has five commercial lenders, each of whom has seven commercial loan officers. Each loan officer has about 100 clients. One of your associates on your sales team spoke with the Windy City sales VP at the Chicago Small Business Expo. Your sales plan for Contacts R Us, Inc., focused on Windy City Bank should be 2,500 to 3,000 words answering the prompts below using concepts you learned from the course to support your recommendations.

Formatting & Sources

Please write your paper in the APA format. As part of your research, you must also use at least three credible, outside sources and cite them using APA format as well. Please include a mix of both primary and secondary sources, with at least one source from a scholarly peer-reviewed journal.

Primary sources are first-hand accounts such as interviews, advertisements, speeches, company documents, statements, and press releases published by the company in question.
Secondary sources come from peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as the Journal of Management. You may use like JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Social Science Research Network to find articles from these journals. Secondary sources may also come from reputable websites with .gov, .edu, or .org in the domain. (Wikipedia is not a reputable source, though the sources listed in Wikipedia articles may be acceptable.)

Project Prompts

1. Research Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions and how they assist organizations.

2. Research the commercial small to-medium-sized banking industry and describe how Windy City Bank might benefit from CRM software.

3. Develop a Sales Plan for Contacts R Us, Inc. for selling its CRM software to the Windy City Bank.

4. Your Sales Plan must answer the following:

Describe how you pre-qualified the Windy City Bank. Specifically identify the criteria you used to pre-qualify the bank.
Explain how you will effectively build trust during the first meeting with the Windy City Bank.
Develop your relationship-building questions. What relationship exists between you and the Windy City Bank and how can you leverage it?
Explain how you will effectively establish source credibility during the first meeting with the Windy City Bank. Give an example of how you might accomplish this.
Provide your critical situational questions. How does the situation qualify the Windy City Bank?
Describe your critical need questions. Why does the Windy City Bank need your product?
Describe and identify the economic user, coach, business user, and/or the technical buyer you will meet. Who is the key buying influence?
Address the potential budget and timing for the purchase decision.
Include a potential elevator pitch 60-second sales summary statement about Contacts R Us CRM software that you will use with the Windy City Bank.
Explain how the features, advantages and benefits of the Contacts R Us CRM software solution meets the needs of Windy City Bank.
Describe a basic oral close you will use with the Windy City Bank.
Develop a follow-up plan for continued contact with the Windy City Bank before, during and after the sale to insure excellent customer relationship management.