Week 4 Individual Assignment (Letter to Customer & Supervisor)

You have taken over a sales account where the previous sales associate did not effectively handle the customer’s needs. You have just received a letter from the dissatisfied customer—see Appendix C. After reading the letter:

Draft a letter to your supervisor and address the following:

• Discuss the importance of the customer’s existing or potential sales revenue.
• Identify the needs of your customer.
• Explain how you will approach your customer to respond to his or her concerns.
• Share the closing methods you will use with your customer to obtain more business in the future.

Draft a second letter to your customer and make sure you do the following:

• Develop trust and rapport.
• Address the customer’s issues.
• Proposealternativesolutions.

Appendix C

To: Nick Rogers, James Company, Inc.                                                              April 14, 2010

From: Ellen Silverweed, Bell Freight, Inc.

Subject: V10 Commercial VOIP system                                                  

Dear Mr. Rogers,

I am writing to you as I was informed that you are my new sales representative. Yesterday, I called your sales department and complained about the issues I am having with the new V10 system, which we recently purchased from your company for $28,000.

Instead of being helped by the person in your sales department, I was told to call the factory, as this is a warranty issue. This response was very upsetting to me, as my company has been buying phone systems from your company for more than 5 years now. We spent more than $150,000 with your company last year alone. Instead of arguing with the sales department, I called your warranty department and was put on hold for more than 20 minutes. I finally hung up out of frustration.

It is very important to my company that this new V10 system works properly as we are using it for our customer service center. If I do not hear back from you by the end of this week, I am going to consider returning the new phone system and taking my business to your competitor.

Sincerely,

Ellen Silverweed

Director, Procurement

Bell Fright, Inc.