Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53A NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENT VŨ THỊ THỦY ASSESSING SALES CAPABILITY OF SALESPEOPLE IN OCEAN[.]
NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS DEPARTMENT VŨ THỊ THỦY ASSESSING SALES CAPABILITY OF SALESPEOPLE IN OCEAN STAR TOUR JOINT STOCK COMPANY Hanoi, May, 2015 Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For me, this is a long journey of learning new things, reading, and thinking to conduct this research Therefore, the completion of this research is an incredible milestone to me, especially when it is accomplished thanks to the helps and supports of many people First of all, I am extremely gratefull to my instructor, Ms Le Thi Thu Mai, MA, for her sincere and valuable guidance and encouragement in three months conducting this research I wish to express my sincere thanks to Mr Phung Anh Don, the General Director of Ocean star tourist company for giving me a very precious chance to become an internship to hone my skills at the company In addition, I want to express my gratitude to all staff of the Sales Department, especially salespeople working at the company, for instructing me in the selling procedures, as well as providing me with documents and data to help me deepen my research Last but not least, I place on record, my sense of gratitude to all my friends and family for their unceasing support and encouragement during the research process Hanoi, May 14th, 2015 i Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .i TABLE OF CONTENTS ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv TABLE OF FIGURES v EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .vi INTRODUCTION .1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION OF OCEAN STAR TOUR JOINT STOCK COMPANY 1.1 Overview of Ocean star tour joint stock company .4 1.1.1 History of establishment and development .4 1.1.2 Organization structure .5 1.1.3 Overview of Ocean star tour joint stock company’s products 1.1.4 Introduction about the sales department and sales team of Ocean star tour company CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .7 Personal selling .7 2.1 Definition 2.2 The nature of Personal selling 2.3 The role of sales force 2.4 Personal selling process 10 2.5 Managing the sales force 13 2.5.1 Classify the sales force 13 2.5.2 Evaluating salespeople and sales force performance 15 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS SALESPEOPLE CAPABILITY IN OCEAN STAR TOUR COMPANY .16 3.1 Selling process in Ocean star tour company 16 3.1.1 Approaching 17 3.1.2 Prospecting and qualifying .18 3.1.3 Presentation and demonstration .19 3.1.4 Handling objections .19 3.1.5 Closing 19 ii Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A 3.1.6 Follow-up 20 3.2 Strengths of salespeople in Ocean star tour company 20 3.2.1 Young sales force 20 3.2.2 Joining training course 20 3.2.3 Good basement of knowledge about tourism 21 3.3 Weaknesses of salespeople in Ocean star tour company 22 3.3.1 Lack of tourism and hospitality knowledge and skills 22 3.3.2 Lack of necessary skills 23 3.3.3 Lack of loyalty to the job .24 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE THE WEAKNESSES OF SALESPEOPLE IN OCEAN STAR TOUR JSC 26 4.1 Recruiting and selecting salespeople 26 4.2 Training (coaching) 27 4.3 Compensation 28 4.4 Evaluation 28 CONCLUSION 30 APPENDIX REFERENCES iii Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS JSC Joint Stock Company HR Human Resource VND Vietnam dong iv Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A TABLE OF FIGURES Chart 1: Organization structure of Ocean star tour Jsc .5 Chart 2: steps in the personal selling (Philip Kotler, 2012) 10 Chart 3: Steps in personal selling in Ocean star tour Jsc 16 Chart 4: the ways salespeople approach customers 18 Chart 5: Opinions about training course 21 Chart 6: Qualifications of salespeople 23 v Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Ocean star tour Jsc., is a company working in tourism sector of Vietnam The company operates with the mission of providing the high-quality products and services related to tourism sector for Vietnamese customers as well as foreign ones This research is conducted to rate the capability of salespeople in sales department of Ocean star tour jsc., which aims to give recommendations to improve the efficiency of sales force in the company Thanks for numerous studies, collected data and opinions of personnel working in the Sales Department of the company, the author has come to the conclusion that there are six steps involving in implementing a successful selling process of a tourism company Then, base on those fundamental steps, the study gives a closer look into the current situations to evaluate the competency of sales force From the findings, the author gives recommendations to improve the capability of selling team in the last chapter vi Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A INTRODUCTION Background of the study In recent year, Vietnam has paid attention to develop tourism sustainably which results in increasing the number of tourists traveling to Vietnam that has brought a gross profit for the country Therefore tourism is considered as a smokeless industry for the gross profit it brings According to General statistics office, the number of international visitors people to Vietnam in February 2015 is estimated at 756 000, increased by 7.9% compared to the previous month and decreased by 10.2% over the same period of 2014 That figure shows the weakness of current tourism situation of the country at the moment when one-time tourists problem happens popularly which affects our tourism negatively The author cannot blame any factors for exact reasons but the quality of services that salespeople gave tourists are one of those Obviously, every entity survives by selling their products to customers and salespeople are the ones who have direct impact on the survival and development of the company Therefore, rating the salespeople capability helps enterprises know the current situation of their staff competency and then find out the solutions to hone their skills that helps bring a high turnover for the company As a business operating in the field of tourism sector, selling products and services to tourists even means so much more for the survival of Ocean star tour company However, nowadays there are more and more tourism firms growing in Hanoi which creates a very competitive environment and of course makes it uneasy to approach and sell services to tourists As a result, this research is conducted to dig deeply into salespeople capability in Ocean star tour company- the vital reason for the development of the company These inspire me to choose assessing salespeople capability of Ocean star tour company as a topic to study about Rationale & purposes As we all know, sale performance is a key for every entities Companies can have good products, outstanding services or profound advertising campaigns and so on but sale force is the one persuading customers to buy their products They are the intermediary between company and their customers Thus, it makes sense to invest Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A in developing sale force and this research is conducted to help assess and then can improve the skills as well as the turnover of the company This paper, thus, aims to: • Have overview of the theory of personal selling and assessing salespeople’s capability in Ocean star tour company • Analyze and evaluate the strengths and limitations of salespeople • Give some suggestions to improve and enhance the effectiveness of the sales department of the company Scope of the research In this paper, to evaluate salespeople capability, the research concentrates on defining personal selling, understanding the personal selling process to see how good Ocean star tour company’s selling staff in selling their company’s activities (within travel agents) and establish standards to assess salespeople Moreover, the research draws recommendations mostly relied on ideas in theory that suit the current state of sales force in the tourism industry Research questions This paper is going to answer questions: i What is the current situation of selling products and services in Ocean star tour company? ii What are strengths and weaknesses of salespeople in Ocean star tour company and how they impact the business operation of the company? iii Which solutions should the company apply to improve and enhance sales turnover of its employees? Methodology “Methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study It comprises the theoretical analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with a branch of knowledge”(Wikipedia) Therefore methodology plays a vital role in conducting a logic, qualified and scientific research that brings benefits for readers So in this paper, the author uses the following scientific research methods: Vũ Thị Thủy – CQ533795 – Business English 53 A Observation method: the author observes and reviews personal selling of staff in Ocean star tour company to fully understand how the selling process works Survey method: questionnaire with yes/no questions is created to require twelve salespeople of the company answer so collect data about their current competency Also, interview method also helps to have a closer access to check salespeople’s persuasive ability and real reaction with customers’ complains and wonderings The respondents are selling team of the company who are supposed to answer the questions related to cases about each steps of the selling process as well as their advantages and disadvantages in selling Analysis method: quantitative method is used to analyze data collected from questionnaires and interview part Furthermore, some official information and knowledge in Principles of marketing by Phillip Kotller (14th edition) will be made use of to form theoretical framework Structure of the research The report includes four main parts: Chapter 1: Introduction of Ocean star tour company Chapter 2: Theoretical framework Chapter 3: Findings and analysis Chapter 4: Recommendations ... deeply into salespeople capability in Ocean star tour company- the vital reason for the development of the company These inspire me to choose assessing salespeople capability of Ocean star tour company. .. STAR TOUR JOINT STOCK COMPANY 1.1 Overview of Ocean star tour joint stock company 1.1.1 History of establishment and development Ocean star tour company is a prestige company operating in tourism... customers, introducing and persuading them to buy Ocean star tour? ??s services 1.1.3 Overview of Ocean star tour joint stock company? ??s products In 2007, Ocean star tour company appeared in the tourism