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Selling a New Service to Prospective Clients

Objectives:

  • Focus on benefits for clients in talking about a new service
  • Enable clear communication in a short concise manner that is engaging.
  • Identify the importance of re-framing features as benefits.

Overview:

The focus of this task is the application of communicating the benefits and features of a new service in practice in a role-play situation. Students gain peer feedback in a role-play and from an observer on how convincing their benefits are and how they communicate them. They learn how to adapt the benefits they communicate to the target customer.

Activity

This activity takes about 30 minutes from introduction to debrief, if run with one role play situation.

Ideally, it should be run using the following stages:

  1. Introduction of the exercise with learning outcomes
  2. For the given services, identify features and benefits (plenary)
  3. Build small groups using a random member selection approach
  4. Brief observers and role play participants on what they need to do
  5. Go into roles and act out the situation
  6. Peer feedback
  7. If there is time for role changes: Change roles within the small groups
  8. Repeat step 5 and 6 – as often as suitable, ideally three different situations are used by the small group
  9. De-brief.

Overall, the role-play with three role-play situations can last about one hour.

The role-play situations offer three different scenarios for which the students need to adapt the generic list of features and benefits to the target customer in front of them. For each target customer they need to decide on the most important benefit.

The three target customers are:

  1. Students
  2. Single male parent with two children under 10 years of age, who is working full-time
  3. Older people.

The short role briefs below are only a starting point, feel free to embellish them with further details or change them.

Role brief target customers:

Students: Peter (Kate) is a student staying in a campus based student hall. While the hall offers washing machines, they are either constantly full or broken, so that he has to go very late or early in the morning in order to be able to have his clothes washed. Peter works part-time so that he has some money to spare he could spend on a laundry service.

Single male parent: John works as an IT consultant for a Council. His wife died last year in a car accident and he is bringing up their two children by himself. Being a dedicated father, John would rather spend time with his children than doing the housework, but there is work to be done. The two kids use a set of clothes every day, as they are wild players. John has to be cautious with money, as he is the sole earner and is building up reserves slowly for university for both kids.

Kate and Rowland are a happy retired couple in their late 70s. They are both still fit and out and about a lot, hiking for example. Kate is suffering from arthritis and cannot move her hands as swiftly as she would like to, while John is not one for housework around laundry, as for the last 30 years Kate had always dealt with that side of the housework. Money is tight, as with all people living on their pensions, but they are doing OK.

Role brief observers:

As an observer, you are asked to watch the two role players for their body language, tone of voice and choice of words. Overall, how convincing does the start-up appear to you? What story do they tell? How responsive are they towards the needs of the customer? Have they adapted the benefits meeting the customer pain? Take notes and feed them back to the start-up, but also the customer. How convincing was the customer?

Role brief for the start-up for the laundry service:

You have developed a new service, to pick up laundry from clients, and return it to them within 24 hours. Naturally, the service comes at a price going beyond what the cost of using to-pay-for washing machines or doing the washing yourself. You have to convince the target customer that it is worth spending money on your service. For the customer at hand, find the most important benefit(s) that will convince them that you are offering a solution to a big problem they have.

Assessment of the activity can be through an entry in a reflective diary students at level 5 and 6, or Master’s level can be asked to write as part of an overall coursework assessment. The reflection needs to address skills development and learning about sales.

Skill Development:

The QAA (2012) highlights how important the development of communication skills is for employability in general, and running a business in particular. This exercise is supporting the development of entrepreneurial capabilities. The following skills are developed with this exercise:

  • Communication skills (general), verbal
  • Sales skills (communication skills)
  • Giving and receiving feedback
  • Reflection skills on own communication skills and sales skills.

Resources:

  • Role briefs for observers and role play participants
  • Pen and paper, A4
  • (recording software every smart phone offers)

References:

Hill, I. (2015) Start Up. A practice based guide to new venture creation. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

Links:

Author / Attribution

This guide was produced by Inge Hill. If you would like to contact the author, please use this email address:- ingehill@mystart-up.info.