Discussion

1. The use of social media for professional selling is steadily increasing. What are your thoughts on using social media for your selling activities? What Code of Ethics exist, or should be created, to guide the profession in the use of social media?

2. What are two specific issues that a salesperson should be concerned with when using social media to develop selling opportunities?

3. Values and benefits vary from customer-to-customer. If value changes, how can the value proposition be used to create value in the professional selling process?

4. Since Week 2, we have been reading about features and benefits. Select a product (good or service) that you are familiar with and have purchased recently. Name three different features of this product, then provide one benefit that each feature provides. For example, an eBook has a feature of being accessible on a number of different devices. The benefit provided might be versatility to meet personal preference (laptop versus mobile versus tablet, etc).

5. Particularly for new products, what makes them sell? How do we even let potential customers know about new products? Who among our potential customers are critical for products to take off?

6. What is the Model of Communication and why is it so important to advertising? What happens if something goes wrong? Any good examples?

7. For our second discussion topic this week, we will take a look at how the elements of the promotion mix work together to complement one another. Are there similar objectives among the elements of the promotion mix, or are they different?

8. How do we go about establishing a budget? What are some of the approaches? How might you do your budget given your particular situation?