Product Knowledge Proficiency Enhancement Program - Research Paper Example

Development and Training Paper Product knowledge proficiency enhancement program is required to be implemented at Company X, in order to ensure closing a sale and remarkably obtain financial liquidity and future stability of its operation. In this paper, the proponent tries to include needs assessment, design, development, implementation and evaluation of the said program. Furthermore, implications of the said program for the organization’s performance are included. Keywords: product knowledge proficiency enhancement, organization’s performance Introduction This is about the case of Company X (not the real name of the company), which is currently under its expansion program within the Asia Pacific. This is a marketing-driven company, employing its personnel and exposing them further into the achievement of required revenue in order to realize substantial amount of profit. However, the company needs to ensure high closing rate of its sales personnel. The company sells its products and these offerings at some point would require technical skills and substantial product knowledge proficiency. This is due to the fact that the company promotes products that are highly technical in nature, and at the same time it would directly sell them to experts and professional users such as engineers and architects. Regarding this, a product enhancement program is necessary. Doing this would require a specific kind of program that in terms of arising needs should be assessed, designed, developed, implemented and evaluated. In this paper, the proponent tries to formulate this training program involving the concept of product knowledge and proficiency enhancement activity for the sales personnel. After all, closing a sale is an art that could be associated with product knowledge (Tracy, 2007). Needs assessment Closing a sale is required at Company X, as this would not only ensure achievement of revenue, but above all making certain about its financial liquidity and future stability of its operation. Upon the hiring process, the company sees to it that the newly-hired personnel have the required selling skills. After all, the company is determined and always looking forward to hit its target monthly sales quota. In other words, the company is expecting to acquire aggressive sales personnel in order to achieve its corporate objectives. However, in the case of Company X, having the required technical know-how on how to close a sale is not enough. In fact, there is a need to know more about the product especially on the technical aspects of it. As already stated, most of the users of the company’s offerings are engineers and architects. This means that the sales team should substantially know the technical aspects of their product and service offerings. The company recognized this need. In fact, upon the hiring process, the newly-hired personnel are normally exposed to basic product knowledge activity, but it is not just enough as dynamic information about the products continues to exist. The sales team should constantly be exposed to regular product knowledge session. Thus, every active sales person should be constantly updated with new product trends and relevant information that each one could use especially in the actual sales call. This is a specific strategy within the human resource that at some point relevant to the actual world (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2007). In the case of Company X, the above stated strategy is pertinent to obtaining its corporate objectives. Design The company has to maximize its research and development department. This department consists of product specialists and the department head that could work hand in hand in developing training material consisting of updated and relevant information about the company’s product offerings. With the proposed need for regular product knowledge and proficiency enhancement program, the product research and development department could substantially provide the kind of information to be shared with the sales personnel. They all have the necessary information prior to the updated information about their product offerings. In most cases, the research and development only have the technical specification of the product and at some point this department has to conduct laboratory research and investigation just to be able to learn more about the products they are selling. Most of the time, the said department also gathers information regarding customers’ feedbacks about their products. At this point, it is clear enough that the training materials should be created under the supervision of the research and development department. This department could also suggest the necessary resources in order to effectively convey product knowledge and enhancement activity. For instance, the product and research department could interact directly with the company’s main product producers in order to arrange probable meetings or seminars regarding the products, technical specifications and other relevant concerns. Development To ensure productivity and effectiveness of the proposed program, the research and development department of the Company X should initiate direct collaboration with its main suppliers. Also, additional resources coming from the academe should be potentially tapped. For instance, university professors who are adept with the necessary concepts in physics, chemistry and other relevant scientific expertise, field or discipline should be used in order for the sales personnel to undergo basic technical understanding about how their products functioned. In modern marketing, products that require technical information are commonly observed to be usually promoted using technical expertise (Mohr, Sengupta, & Slater, 2009). This would further ensure that sales personnel would be more convincing in their promotion of the products. The company should allocate not only the head of the research and development department, but including the product specialists who are in-charge with the laboratory experiments and customers’ feedbacks. The product specialists should be the one to facilitate exposure of the sales personnel to the actual empirical evidence associated with the product offerings, which would involve their technical specifications and customers’ feedbacks. The sales team leader or sales department head should continuously collaborate with the above mentioned resource speakers. This would make everything about the program highly organized and well-studied. After all, the resource persons should look forward to the actual needs of the sales department as far as product knowledge is concerned. Implementation Training should be in a form of class discussion, gathering all the sales personnel in a room where the resource speaker is there to explain relevant information about the product. Multimedia presentation might be allocated as it would facilitate fast way of introducing important concepts or ideas. Thus, a lively and interactive discussion between the resource speakers which would come from the academe, suppliers and research and development department, and the sales personnel should be executed accordingly. Part of this should be actual product demo and other relevant activities that could help facilitate learning. If a workshop is necessary, then it would also be implemented. Part of the actual workshop would be role playing activities. At this point, the sales personnel will be given the chance or opportunity to master the basic concepts or ideas they would acquire from the product knowledge proficiency and enhancement program. This eventually will give the sales personnel the opportunity to be exposed to at least almost actual scenario as they would be role played together with the experts. Thus, this would ensure relevant information would be asked or integrated along the activity. Furthermore, actual emersion into laboratory experiments should be implemented with the sales personnel. Thus, product specialists should supervise the sales personnel for this matter. The actual product knowledge proficiency and enhancement program should be initiated whole day, twice a month. Evaluation Right after the training, aside from the role playing activity, sales personnel should be given a short written evaluation. They would be given some practical questions to answer just a way of evaluating if they have substantially acquired the elemental knowledge during the training. Every sales person should be expected to get at least 80 percent in the evaluation. After all, the company substantially used 80 percent as the benchmark of achieving anything as far as the entire operation is concerned. Aside from this, a monthly evaluation and role playing activity should be initiated within the sales department. In the evaluation, the department head should prepare some questions to be answered both written and oral. In addition, a role playing activity will be initiated further in order to effectively facilitate reinforcement and retention of learning. Prior to the actual monthly evaluation, the research and development department should post to the sales department’s bulletin board day by day some significant information relevant to product knowledge. At the end of the month, the acquired information should be integrated with the actual evaluation and role playing activity. The sales department should then be able to get at least 80 percent product knowledge proficiency score for the whole team. Contribution to organization’s performance In companies like Apple Incorporated, everyone is exposed to positive technical advantage with their products especially in areas of design, and promotion (O’Grady, 2008). This is due to the nature of its corporate objectives especially in obtaining competitive advantage in its industry. In the same way, the actual product knowledge proficiency enhancement program at Company X would see to it that the sales personnel will be highly educated with the actual empirical evidence regarding the company’s product offerings. This will definitely increase their confidence and ability in selling their product offerings, especially in condition where there is a need to consider technicalities about the specific product of concern. In addition, this will eventually help achieve the target sales revenue for the month. Sales personnel with high product knowledge proficiency are expected to close a sale. Closing a sale on the other hand does not just require superb selling skills, but as well as substantial essential ideas about the offerings (Tracy, 2007). As a result, the product knowledge proficiency enhancement program should equip the sales department in order to be more productive and efficient in their sales call. As a result, the company should expect remarkable customer feedback. The percentage of satisfied customers should increase as they are expected to clearly understand more about the products they are using. This eventually will become the company’s competitive advantage, excellent customer support. Conclusion Product knowledge proficiency enhancement program would just fit with the prevailing concern of Company X especially in obtaining its specific monthly sales quota. After all, its products require higher level of technical know-how and expertise prior to closing a sale. Therefore, equipping the sales department through product proficiency and enhancement program would just make sense. References Mohr, J. J., Sengupta, S., & Slater, S. F. (2009). Marketing of High-Technology Products and Innovations (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Jakki Mohr. Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P.M. (2007). Fundamentals of Human Resource Management (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. O’Grady, J. D. (2008). Apple Incorporated. Westpoint, Connecticut: ABC-CLIO. Tracy, B. (2007). The Art of Closing the Sale: The Key to Making More Money Faster in the World of Professional Selling. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Inc. Read More