Presentation Made to the Team at Cygmax IT Solutions London
An effective sales presentation has the potentiality to convince the customer regarding your company and product you are going to sell them. It gives all the details regarding the product and tries to persuade the customer as to why your product is the best in the market. Sales process has been developed basing on the engineering discipline (Selden 1997). The current report is the sales presentation of Royal Orchid (Royal Orchid) Hotel of London to a team of executives from Cygmax IT Solutions (Cygmax) based in London. Royal Orchid has its hotels spread across the world. Similar is the case with Cygmax. The company was looking for expanding its product offerings in Asian and Middle-East markets like China and Dubai.
- Prospecting
- Description of Royal Orchid
Royal Orchid is one of the well established companies in the UK hospitality industry. The company is headquartered in London but had its operations spread across the world. Most of its hotels are concentrated in the European markets like UK, Germany, and France. The company also has a significant presence in the USA and the Latin American markets. Some of the key highlights of the hotel are given below:
- Established in the year 1950 by a group of young entrepreneurs, the hotel places a lot of importance on providing world-class customer service to its clients. The hotel believes in the idea of customer comes first.
- The company mainly targets the working executives who are constantly on the move.
- The hotel chain concentrates mostly on the premium customers. Most of the hotels operated by Royal Orchid are three star and five star properties.
- The hotel chain has a small presence in the super premium and luxury segments with a limited number of super premium and luxury hotels dotted across some of the major cities in Europe and USA.
- Royal Orchid also has a chain of budget hotels targeted at the executives of small and medium sector enterprises who could not afford the higher priced premium hotels. The company runs the budget hotels under a separate brand called Royal Orchid Lite.
- The company also has tie-ups with other hotel chains in Europe and Americas for accommodating its clients in places where it did not have its own hotels.
- Description of Cygmax
Cygmax is one of the leading IT services firm based in London. The firm was established in the year 2000 and has quickly grown to be one of the leading IT service companies in Europe. Cygmax serves both big small and big businesses with a suit of IT products related to Banking, Insurance, and other kind of financial services. The company was contemplating on expanding its services to Asian markets like China and India. It was also looking to climb the ladder of IT services and start offering consulting services to attract premium clients. To fuel this expansion it came out with a public issue and started recruiting senior management team.
Some of the salient aspects of Cygmax are:
- A significant market share of 10 percent in the market for financial services in Europe and other Asian markets.
- An expanding market share in the consulting market across Europe and the Americas (current market share of 5 percent).
- Had access to financial resources due to the funds from the recent IPO.
- Pre-Approach
Pre-approach is the second and one of the most important aspects of the personal selling process (Farber nd). In this stage, more detailed information regarding the client is gathered. The requirements of the client and what your company has to offer to fulfill those requirements will be also analyzed. A good level of preparation at the level of pre-approach will make it easier when the client is actually approached.
With an expanding business spread across Europe, Americas, and Asia; Cygmax presents a good opportunity to Royal Orchid. Many of the clients served by Cygmax have their offices in the top European and American cities in the world. In order to serve its clients, efficiently Cygmax too has setup its sales offices in places like Brussels, Paris, Hamburg, Moscow, and London. Both the senior and middle level executives of the company keep shuttling across the company’s sales offices and stay in touch with their clients.
Since the company was still in an expansion mode and had to allocate its scarce resources between all the crucial departments of the company, it has tight budgetary provisions for executive travel and stay. Even the senior executives of the organization are encouraged to travel in budget airlines and stay in economy hotels.
With a significant presence in the market for premium and budget hotel segments, Royal Orchid has the potentiality to offer lot of value to Cygmax. The wide range of services offered by Cygmax to its customers will be of a good fit to the requirements of Cygmax. As the company was still in the growth stage, entering into an early alliance with the company can help in expanding the relationship with Cygmax when it emerges as a big multinational corporation in the future. The perfect match between the requirements of the Cygmax and what Royal Orchid has to offer makes it one of the best prospects for the company.
- Approach
Once the match between the client requirements and what the company has to offer matches, the next stage is to actually approach the client, ask for an appointment for the initial chat, and fix a date for the final presentation.
Once Cygmax is decided as one of the potential targets for Royal Orchid, the client needs to be approached in a systematic manner and discuss what Royal Orchid has to offer them. The main objectives of Royal Orchid’s salesmen in the approach stage are:
- Check whether all the information that was collected regarding the organization during the pre-approach was correct or not.
- Meeting the Client and Building Rapport
With the above mentioned objectives, attempts will be made to contact the client. The initial starting point for meeting the clients is to visit the website of Cygmax and collect the phone numbers and email ids of people who are responsible for deciding the external corporate tie-ups. Attempts will also be made to visit the offices of Cygmax in London and meet the key executives of the organization. A senior executive of Royal Orchid is assigned with the task of making the first cold call to the organization. Once a senior executive of Cygmax is reached, a request will be made for a personal meeting at a hotel or in the office.
During the initial meeting, the senior executive introduces the Royal Orchid brand to the client. After that, every attempt will be made to draw up on the information gathered during the pre-approach stage to enquire about the ‘problem’ of the client (what the customer needs). Next, a brief idea regarding what Royal Orchid has to offer to effectively address the problems faced by Cygmax will be given. Comments like, ‘we have better to offer than the services of the current hotel chain’ they were utilizing will help in breaking the ice.
There is a possibility that there is a slight variation in what the executives have learned about the company and the real facts and problems faced by Cygmax. The senior executive making the cold call make every attempt to understand this gap properly during the cold call and make suitable adjustments to the final offer that will be made by Royal Orchid.
- Presentation
After successfully approaching the key executives of Cygmax and having a discussion regarding the services that you could offer to them, some time should be given for Cygmax to think about the offer made. If the executives are satisfied with the initial offer made by you, the next step to organize a full scale presentation regarding the services offered by Royal Orchid to its clients. Care should also be taken to correct any difference in the problems being faced by Cygmax as understood by the executives of Royal Orchid initially.
The main presentation of the selling process will be lengthy and stretches up to four to five hours. Presentation will be attended by a team of senior executives from Cygmax. The ideal place for organizing the presentation will be in the conference room of a hotel or the offices of Royal Orchid and Cygmax. Official request for giving an appointment for the presentation will be made by sending an Email. Date for the presentation should be fixed basing up on the availability of time for the executives of Cygmax.
The presentation will be made through Microsoft’s Power Point presentation software. While preparing the presentation, care will be taken to ensure that it is kept as concise as possible covering all the key topics that need to be conveyed to the client. The number of slides that will be prepared for the presentation will also kept to the minimum so that it can be completed within the time allotted by the client.
The first issue that will be dealt during the presentation is the problems that are being faced by Cygmax regarding the travel needs of its executives. A detailed presentation regarding the problems being faced by the organization will give a good start as it will make it easy for the client to understand the solutions that can be offered by the company to solve those problems.
- Problems Faced by Cygmax
Being a medium sized IT Services Company with clients spread across most of the western world and operating under a limited budget puts a lot of challenges before Cygmax:
Requirement to Meet Clients Frequently.
As the clients of Cygmax are spread across Europe and much of Americas, it needs to stay in constant touch with them. Executives need to meet the clients frequently and understand their exact requirements. Despite the wide spread availability of modern communication technologies like video conferencing, many clients want to personally meet the executives of Cygmax. Frequently travel of executives puts a lots of cost burden on Cygmax.
Limited Travel Budgets.
Being a startup with limited resources, Cygmax could allot a limited budget for the travel needs of its executives. Even senior executives are travel through budget airlines and stay in budget or premium hotels (super premium and luxury hotels are not allowed).
Limited Services Availability at Most Budget Hotels.
The budget hotel chains with which Cygmax had tie-ups offered a limited range of services to its clients. Many of the commonly used services by travelling executives like WiFi and access to cable television were not available with budget hotel chains. Even in case the hotel offered these services, they charged additional amount which increased the overall cost of travel for the company.
Lack of Proper Network with Small Hotel Chains.
Many budget and premium hotel chains in Europe had limited network across the world. As budget chains were limited to a few countries in Europe. Limited network made it necessary to have tie-ups with a large number of budget hotel chains across the world. Dealing with a range of hotel chains made it difficult to get good discounts on the services offered by them.
Future Needs in the Asian Markets.
As part of its expansion plans, Cygmax wants to expand its services to some major Asian countries like China and India. This results in more number of Cygmax’s executives being required to visit the Asian markets frequently for meeting the local clients. However, many of the Europe based hotel chains with which Cygmax had tie-ups do not have any presence in the Asian markets. This issue can pose a significant problem to the future needs of Cygmax.
- Addressing the Needs of the Clients
The next most important step in presentation is to effectively address the problems faced by Cygmax by providing them with appropriate solutions. Below are the possible solutions that could be offered to solve the problems faced by Cygmax:
A Good Network of Hotels.
Cygmax has a wide network of hotels that are spread across the Europe and the Americas. The hotels chain includes a total of 500 hotels located in major cities and small towns. As the junior management of Cygmax was required to stay only at the budget hotels while travelling abroad, they could stay at the Royal Orchid Lite budget hotels.
Wide Range of Services.
Through an efficient cost control system, Cygmax had always tried to put the costs of the group under control. This has enabled its group’s hotels to offer a wide range of services than those of the other premium and budget hotel chains. Some of the premium services offered by Cygmax are:
- Access to high-speed Internet through Wi-Fi at no additional cost. Customers will be given free WiFi coupons that could be utilized during their stay in the hotel.
- Free access to cable television during their stay at the hotel.
- Free airport pickup and drop to the airport which have entered into long-term tie-ups with the hotel group..
- 24/7 room service by highly trained hotel staff.
All these services are offered to its clients without asking for any additional payments.
Discounted Fare.
Royal Orchid offered a higher discount to the clients with which it had long-term contracts. While it was found during the approach stage that Cygmax was getting just 20 percent discounts over the regular fare, Royal Orchid will be offering a flat 35 percent discount to its clients across all its hotel chains.
Expanding Network in Asian Countries.
One of biggest issues that Cygmax faced was regarding its future expansion in the Asian countries. As Royal Orchid too was expanding its services in Asia, it would be perfect fit between the expansion plans of the two companies.
Tie-ups with Other Hotel Chains
While Royal Orchid had its hotels in all the major cities across Europe, some American cities and small towns were still not covered by its network. To solve this problem, Cygmax had tie-ups with other hotel chains which had higher presence in smaller American towns. Executives of Cygmax could stay in the hotels of other hotel chains and enjoy the same level of discounts offered by Cygmax to its regular clients.
- Customer Testimonials
In order to convince the quality of services offered by Royal Orchid to its clients, special emphasis will be put on the testimonials given by its previous customers. Many of the corporate houses with which Royal Orchid had tie-ups stayed with the company for a long period of time. Testimonials from these clients will be used during the presentation stage to convince the executives of Cygmax.
- Site Visits
Site visits will be another strategy that will be used to convince the executives of Cygmax. Since Royal Orchid has its hotel chains spread across Europe and Americas, executives will be asked t visit any of the closest hotels to the presentation site and check the quality of the hotels for themselves. They will also be asked to taste the food served at its hotels by having a lunch/dinner at any of the hotel chains.
Before leaving from the place of the presentation, the executives of Cygmax will be given all the details of the services offered by Royal Orchid and the corporate/seasonal discounts that will be offered as part of the deal that will be signed by the parties.
- Closing
The presentation will be closed by giving any further details regarding the hotel as requested by the client. Some additional offers like can also be given by the executives of Royal Orchid like free upgrades to premium rooms during the lean season to convince the client (Cygmax). A proposal to enter into a limited tie-up with Royal Orchid will be made initially. If the client is satisfied with the service during the trial period, he can enter into a long-term tie-up.
- Follow-Up
Before closing the presentation, the details of executives who need to be contacted for addressing any doubts will be collected. In the subsequent dates following the presentation, the senior executives of Royal Orchid will meet the executives of Cygmax at intermittent intervals. Any concerns they might possibly have regarding the services offered by Royal Orchid and possible future discounts will also be discussed. If Cygmax still could not be convinced during the follow-up stage, an additional five discount will be offered for closing the deal.
- Summary
The current report is regarding the presentation that will be given by the executives of Royal Orchid to the senior management team of Cygmax. Cygmax is one of the leading medium sized companies in Europe which offered IT Services to its clients across Europe and Americas. The company also had plans to expand in the Asian markets in the future. Cygmax was facing some problems with the hotel chains it had tie-ups like limited range of services offered, lack of a wide network in the Americas, low discounts, and little presence in the Asian markets. During the presentation, an attempt will be made to solve all the problems of Cygmax. Higher discounts, better range of services, and free upgrades to premium rooms during the lean season are some of the benefits that will be offered to convince the executives of Cygmax to close the deal. Any additional doubts and requests for additional discounts will be handled during the follow-up stage of the sale process.
References
Farber, B nd, 8 steps to a successful sales call.Available from: < http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/207016>. [4 December 2014].
Selden, PH 1997, Sales process engineering: A personal workshop, WI: ASQ Quality Press, Milwaukee.
