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Selling Roles
Marketing Textbooks Boundless Marketing Personal Selling and Sales Promotion Selling Roles
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Concept Version 8
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Support Personnel

Support personnel provide after-sales or technical assistance to customers, including functions ranging from engineering to marketing.

Learning Objective

  • List the common tasks that fall under sales support personnel


Key Points

    • In highly technical industries, support personnel like sales engineers are a key part of the sales process.
    • The purpose of the sales engineer is to provide both pre-sales and post-sales support.
    • Sales engineers also teach customers and help tailor solutions to meet the needs of their customers.

Terms

  • customer relationship management

    A widely implemented model for managing a company's interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. Also known by the acronym "CRM. "

  • white paper

    A factual write-up of something, specifically devoid of the appearance of marketing.

  • supply chain

    A system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer.


Example

    • At large corporations such as IBM, support personnel includes technical specialists who assist or play a key role on customer account teams.

Full Text

Support Personnel

Support personnel are professionals not directly involved in the sales or revenue generating process, but nonetheless have an important role to play in a company's success. While support personnel are often seen as those providing after-sales service or technical assistance, the definition of support staff also includes functions such as accounting, finance, human resources, supply chain, etc. Other common support roles that work with sales managers directly or assist clients and customers with product and service issues include sales engineers, technical support specialists, and customer support representatives .

IBM Logo

Highly technical companies like IBM often have technical support salespeople on major account teams.

Support Personnel Responsibilities

Where a product is highly technical and negotiations complex, product and financial specialists may support salespeople, presenting detailed technical information required by customers. In technical support roles, the purpose is to help potential customers understand and compare the solutions that are available for purchase (the pre-sales role); to troubleshoot problems with their implementations—that is, to help ensure that the solutions work successfully once the buying decision has been made (the post-sales role); and to maximize company sales by assisting customers.

It is also common for support personnel to collaborate with their company's design, production, engineering, or research & development (R&D) departments to determine how products and services could be made or modified to suit customers' needs.

This may be ongoing as part of a key account team or on a temporary basis, with the specialists being called in to the selling situation when required. In highly technical companies, the technical support salesperson is often a member of a key account team and has the title of sales engineer, professional services specialist, or something similar.

Marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals often support sales and executive teams during the prospecting and evaluation phases of the sales process. This support usually comes in the form of sales collateral, such as product brochures, market surveys, industry white papers, and other marketing research that demonstrates company strengths and product benefits. Marketing teams may also be involved in organizing events for potential and existing customers, or exhibiting at trade shows to promote their brand and generate new leads for salespersons.

The Expanding Role of Support Professionals

Many products and services purchased by large companies and institutions are highly complex. Examples include airliners, weapons systems, and IT systems (such as telecommunications or databases and their dependent applications for purposes like logistics or customer relationship management). Sales support professionals often advise customers on how best to use the products or services provided.

Thus, in such industries, there may be a great overlap in the roles of support and sales personnel. While the latter's job is to make a sale and maintain customer relationships, support personnel in technical industries advise customers how best to use the products and services before, during, and after the sale is made.

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