The interns were taught the key aspects of business to customer sales.

By Xiao Hui Chu

Our third week challenge after a long weekend was to learn the key aspects of business to customer sales. Our sales journey kick started with Jon, sales team executive introduced us the basic sales knowledge such as consumer sales structure and ways of approaching different kind of customers. In addition, role play task known as mystery shoppers was assigned to us to feel and to get first hand emotional experience and expectations of both customers and sellers of TIME products.

After understanding the art of selling, we have been assigned a group challenge involving sales of TIME product with a set target attached with an attractive reward string. TIME was generous in rewarding the group with RM 150 that can successfully transform the customer chat into sales of TIME’s package to a new customer. Anyway, I feel it was a real field challenge for a business school intern to move away from the office’s chair and to learn the nitty-gritty of mind reading and attracting a new customer.

Our initial experience sales were not that easy as I thought but it is all about reading and adapting to the needs of customer…..

One of the locations assigned to our group was unexpectedly canceled, hence we have been re-designated to an alternate location i.e. Tesco Ara, Damansara. At first, we were quite nervous and did not know how to act as a mystery shopper, but after some time we decided to divide, our group into two teams to explore all options related to sales in a given period. Although I didn’t have a long conversation with the seller, at the end of the day I’m happy that I’ve learned some of the “DO”s and “DON’T”s to attract new customers in our mission on the following day. For example some of the tips we learned are for “DO”s: express warm greetings, asking engaging questions, educate customers if they are not aware of the products  etc; and “DON’T”: not to have irrelevant materials on display table and if not avoidable then within customer sight, not to leave the sales booth unattended, etc.

The interns discuss the “do”s and “don’t”s of attracting new customers.

Back to know the basics and additional aspects

On the second day of our sales journey, we have been invited to join a review board meeting to share our learning under the leadership of EK in sales and marketing. He mentioned the 4Ps (product, price, place, and promotion) and discussed the differences between TIME and its competitors. Moreover, it was quite interesting to see the different opinions we all had while we had to make assumptions regarding the usage and price of the package.

After the review session, we were then assigned to groups and locations to sell the TIME package. We were so motivated by the reward and determined to get through all the variety of customers but it didn’t go as well as we expected. My sales experience was frustrating at the beginning because people who passed via our booth were busy in their routine style of shopping behavior and not bothered to pay attention to what we were selling, hence they spend minimal time listening to our explanations. In addition to me, many of us had a similar feeling that is hard to sell to a customer because most of us had the conversation are already signed up for TIME internet packages, or living in a fiber connected property. As I mentioned earlier, the experience is similar to all but interestingly one of our team managed to successfully attract a customer to buy a package in just 4 hours!

This reminded us a key sales technique never give up to achieve the target

So the key takeaways from this sales journey to a business school graduate are

….. reading the mind and adapting to the needs of customer…..

……Know the basic do’s and don’t’s……

……never give up …….

Lastly, I’m proud of my learning and feel I’m gifted to be part of the Sussex global internship to Malaysia which paved way to uncover many business methods in a company at my own country which was not known to me before. I am totally, thrilled that I might not got this kind of student experience if I have studied in a Malaysian University. I am hoping to maximize our experience as we only have five days remaining in Malaysia.