Question

Describe and discuss what a salesperson is and identify the different types of salepeople and discuss how they are compensated.

Answer 1

Salesperson: Salesperson is an individual who sells goods and services to other entities. The sales that he does during a given period and the persuasiveness with which he executes the sales are used as a measure of his success.

Apart from the selling skills, a good sales person should have Empathy and should be Focussed towards his goal and understand his responsibility towards the customer as well as the organisation.

Different Type of Salespeople:

We can majorly divide the salespeople in 4 types as follows:

Relational

The relational salesperson aims at the customer-salesperson relationship. There skill lies in quickly building rapport with the customer. Many a times this leads to a sales as the the buyer likes her enough that she becomes the deciding factor in the sales process. These salespeople also establish the long-term relationship with a customer that brings the customer back around for repeat business. These types of salespeople tend to excel in industries like advertising or any type of sales where established accounts selling is important.

These are security-oriented minds and to keep them motivated and attached to job a large fixed base salary with little or no sales commission will work.

Closers

Closers are those who are always trying to close the deal on a sale. This type of salesperson is constantly inching the customer toward the goal of closing the deal. While relationships with customers may still be important for future sales with this type of salesperson, they are usually secondary to the immediate goal of going for the close.

The best form of compensation for consultants is higher commission with little fixed salary that acts as a retainer and motivator for them to continue working for the company.

Consultants

Consultants are probably the most well-rounded of the different types of salespeople. These are people persons who know how to close a deal and build relationships at the same time. Consultants genuinely thrive off of the problem-solving aspect of their job, listening to customer needs and helping them find a solution to their problem. Consultants have superior listening skills and tend to be patient with customers when necessary, but aggressive when necessary also.
In this case, a good mix of sales commission with a decent amount of fixed salary is the best alternative.

Transactional

Transactional salespeople are those that simply wait for the transaction to make their sale. These are the salespeople that you might refer to as the order-takers because they passively sit by waiting for the sale to come to them. They may still be quite successful in what they do, despite their passive attitude, because they may become adept at positioning themselves in the right place at the right time to get the sale. However, most of these salespeople are better off working in a retail environment where the primary job of the salesperson is to help the buyer find the product she is already looking for and then ring it up.

In order to persuade them and keep motivated you have to provide them with a fixed salary but at the same time if there is a transaction that happens from their efforts some % of commission may be little should definitely be paid to keep them motivated.