Sales are the front end of a company or firm. The company takes good number of initiatives to meet the customers' expectations. Sales and Marketing are the parallel themes for a company to run. But Sales is said to be toughest job. It involves lot of things to go through for a sales man. Hence they need to take care of few steps to reach their target or to convince the customer. XEROX is the company which has given a term for the sales people to handle sales in a professional and perfect manner. They have defined it as SPANCO.

SPANCO - Suspect, Prospect, Approach, Negotiations, Closure and Order.

1. Suspect: Here the job of the sales man is to investigate about the particular account or customer. Here they need to check the Contact persons, Authority, Money capability of the company; Real need is there or not etc. Hence sales man should be in a sense of probing that it is a yes account or no. Here they need to suspect the account well.

2. Prospect: Here the role of the sales man is to handle the account as yes to move forward or to drop. They really have to look whether the need is there or not. After checking that they need to prospect the account to handle by building good relationship with other employees of the company too. Hence here the prospecting of account takes place.

3. Approach: Here the sales people need to look at the account to handle in a positive manner. They need to be in touch with the customers to find out the competitors in the account. They need to look at the things in a proper manner to handle the pricing. Here they need to build relationship with Purchase, Marketing, H.R, and Finance/Accounts team. Checking out or submitting your quote.

4. Negotiations: Here the pricing takes place, where the sales people need to be careful. Here it all depends how you check your target, profit margin and customer. Hence the negotiation happens on mutual understanding of both the parties.

5. Closure: After negotiation it comes the point of closing the deal. Here the sales man needs to agree with the terms and conditions including price. After in agree with the party the deal is said to be closed.

6. Order: Here the Purchase order comes into picture. Sales people need to pick the order from the party by agreeing on the terms and conditions (Payment, Delivery). After picking the order they need to be on their ethics to meet customer's expectations.

Hence SPANCO helps the sales people to handle the situation in a smoother and proper manner. It helps the front end of the company to meet the profit and target. Hence the people need to handle the situation with this tool. Hence sales is like SPANCO.

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Reference: XEROX