Sales Staff Manual

Sales Staff Manual

The sales manual provides a useful guide for Sales Account Managers in Flashbay. It covers both basic information and new topics, so should be consulted regularly even by the more experienced sales staff in Flashbay.

If you have any suggestions for additions to the sales manual, or if you need clarification on any of the policies, please email James Roberts, Director of Flashbay, in the first instance.

Order Troubleshooting

Delivery Problems

The first step is to liaise with Aftersales (currently aftersales@flashbay.com or aftersales.us@flashbay.com). They will contact an account manager of the courier company to try and resolve the problem. Remember to empathise with your customer and reassure them we are doing everything we can.

Post delivery problems

Customers will very occasionally make complaints about malfunctioning products or print quality. The following steps should be taken:

1) Empathise with your customer. Advise your customer that we will investigate the problem immediately. Liaise with Aftersales for further instructions.

2) If your customer is purporting to be in possession of malfunctioning units, request instructions from Aftersales.

3) Aftersales may instruct you to schedule a replacement order. Always mention in job notes if an order is for replacements.

4) If applicable, arrange with Aftersales to issue a credit note for any returned units.

Please note that you are required to obtain Aftersales' written approval before offering or even talking about any REFUND to your customers. By standard we do not refund our customers for faulty goods, we replace faulty goods.

Returns Procedure

1) Customer reports a problem to you for an order that has been delivered:

Please ask the customer to provide as much information as possible about the problem in as much detail as possible via phone or email (preferred). If you cannot resolve the problem ‘on the spot’ with the customer over the phone, please advise the customer once you have asked for all the details very carefully that Flashbay will investigate their problem/complaint immediately as a matter of priority and will get back to them as soon as the results are available (usually 24 hours maximum) with an answer. The outcome of the report maybe that Flashbay needs the order back at our offices to be able to investigate the case properly (see 3) below). Regardless, do NOT advise the customer of any answer or promise before our investigation has been completed in full. Do NOT make arrangements of any kind until the report has been completed. When providing information to Aftersales regarding how the problem occurred, keep your report short, factual and logical.

2) Results of investigation:

The result of the investigation will determine whether Flashbay accepts responsibility for a mistake made on an order or whether we refuse to accept responsibility. An email report is issued to the customer on our findings and our conclusion on our findings. This report has to be agreed by Aftersales in writing before emailing to customer. Do not give partial findings or reports to the customer if they call during the investigation - just inform them we are looking into it the case as a matter of priority and will be in touch soon.

3) Return of orders:

If Flashbay has confirmed responsibility for a mistake on an order we will either offer financial compensation or exchange of the goods to the customer. Any offer of compensation or exchange of goods requires the written approval of Aftersales prior to making any arrangements or concessions to a customer.

4) Receiving returned orders:

When Flashbay receives the returned order, our Aftersales staff will advise the relevant sales account manager in charge of the order that the goods have been received back. The warehouse will count the goods very carefully and advise sales staff on the number of items received back. Once the complete order has been received back, you may schedule a replacement order on Netsuite subject to the approval obtained under 3). For particularly urgent replacement requirements, you may schedule a replacement order before receiving back the original order but the factory will not ship until the original order has been confirmed as received back.

Truffle Express - 1 way to recompense your customer

Truffle Express is an aftersales courtesy for final customers that were not 100% satisfied with Flashbay's service (delivery delay, quality problems etc...). On such occasions, we will send customer an apology together with a box of fine chocolate.

Truffle Express is only available to final customers (not resellers) in selected cases which have to be singled out and approved by your respective team manager.

How to initiate?

Email Aftersales with subject line "TRUFFLE EXPRESS". The email body should contain:

i) Netsuite customer record number ii) Contact name iii) Brief description of the particulars of the service failure

Fraud

Fraudulent Enquiries

Enquiries from fraudsters are commonplace for any business that advertises online, including Flashbay.

In fact about 1 in 40 enquiries we receive as a business are fraud, which is fairly normal.

How to recognise fraudsters

• customer writes with poor languages skills

• customer writes with bad grammar

• customer writes in CAPITALS

• customer has a free email address (e.g. shell.oil.company@yahoo.com, guchi.handbags@libero.it etc)

• customer wants to order urgently

• customer keen to pay by credit card, and mentions this payment method early in communication. Customer may also insist on 100% credit terms

• customer doesn't negotiate on price

• customer wants 'blank' units, and not is keen on supplying a logo

• customer wants delivery to Africa, or Russia, or somewhere obscure. There are also plenty of fraudsters in developed countries e.g. Southern Italy

• customer wants delivery to forwarding address or 'PO box' (post box)

• customer has no webpage, or it is under construction, or the webpage is very low quality

Country Sales Team Specific

Spanish Sales Team

Shipments to the Canary Islands

All shipments to the Canary Islands undergo a separate customs procedure in addition to the formal importation to Spain. The import tax which is specific to the Canary Islands is called 'Impuesto General Indirecto Canario', in short IGIC.

Please note that this tax is frequently changed but it should be sufficient to inform the customer that this tax exists.

Mini Marketing Campaigns

There is a STRICT BAN on any of our sales staff running their own mini email marketing campaigns to attract customer business. As a salesperson, you should address leads/customers individually (one at a time) with an individual message and customized offer.

Please see below for reasons why we strictly oppose any micro email marketing campaigns of sales staff:

Strategy reasons

We don’t want to blur the boundary between sales and marketing just as we would not want to get sales people involved in production, shipping etc.

Our marketing strategy is very much automated with the sending of mass emails for information which is widely relevant or for processes which are not possible to do individually. But sending too many general emails can annoy customers. As with many things in life we believe after a certain threshold ‘less is more’ . The balance can only be controlled at a marketing level.

We believe the role of a salesperson is about the value added with individual human interaction and individual decisions. The best salesmanship results from targeted, individualised calls and emails to one's lead/customer base.

If we believed in automating communication, it could be easily achieved in various stages of the order process – but this is not currently the plan as the customer experience would be diminished along with profitability.

Technical reasons

Your email address + IP address combination will be gradually ‘black listed’ by some servers after many identical bulk emails. The % of legitimate email you send which is wrongly classed as spam in future will increase. Our marketing email addresses have the same problem, but we can throw these away and use a new email address. We should however keep ‘you@flashbay.com’ as clean as possible.

Special Requests

Please refrain from making any special offerings above and beyond the Flashbay standard product and service portfolio without written approval from your team leader. What you see on Flashbay's website are the products and services that we sell. Please stick to our STANDARD offering and pay careful attention to the limitations of number of printing colours, delivery times (depending on payment status) etc. etc.

The job of a salesperson is to direct the customer’s ambitions and ideas towards our standard product offering, and not vice versa. For example if your customer requires a bespoke flash drive design, advise them that we cannot source the particular model and direct them to the closest matching product we supply highlighting its similarities and advantages.

Summary

6 WORKING DAYS LEAD TIME APPLIES FROM DATE OF ORDER TO DATE OF DELIVERY (6 working days also applies from receipt of formal payment confirmation, complete data submission for data preload, change of shipping address, receipt of shipping instructions, artwork approval etc.)

Minimum Order quantity is 25 pieces

We do not change the shipping address of an order after it has shipped

We do not part ship orders unless there is a full extra shipping charge on the sales order for the additional part shipment

You require your team leader's written approval if you wish to choose a price below our lowest price level

You are required to schedule a NEW sales order if you wish to add quantity to an order that has already been placed and approved

You may offer free shipping for a customer based on intelligent commercial judgement without written approval if you have passed your trial period. Free shipping should be used in the pre-sales cycle as an effective negotiation tool.

Where special NAND is requested by a customer, you must quote "price list level 7 + cost price of special NAND". Cost prices are available from Operations (operations.cn@flashbay.com). The minimum order quantity for special NAND flash orders is 500 units.

You are required to report any customer problem to Aftersales via email

Before offering any compensation to any of your customers for mistakes, you are required to obtain Aftersales' written approval to do so

Any mistake that is being made by the sales account managers on entering a sales order will result in the sales order being marked ex commission

Your Commission

New Business - Double the Reward

For any new business you generate (defined as 1st order from a new customer above £50.00), you will receive 6% commission based on the first order only. This reward system is designed to better match the effort required for a first time customer and their first order compared to any subsequent order as well as the profit generated from new customer business in general.

Get a lot of NEW BUSINESS and reap the rewards with our 6% commission scheme.

New Business - Minimum Commission Policy

£10 minimum commission is awarded for all new business orders. £10 minimum commission orders show in green on your commission dashboard.

Existing Customer Commission Scheme

The standard commission amount is 3% of profit generated from your orders.

100 days overdue = ex-commission

Any sales order which becomes 100 days overdue for payment is automatically marked ex-commission.

Minimum Profit Requirement and Minimum Daily Activity Requirement

Minimum Profit Requirement

All sales account management staff will be set a monthly minimum sales profit requirement – the exact figures will be clearly displayed on your ‘commission dashboard’. Achieving this minimum requirement is an obligation.

If a sales account manager fails to achieve this reasonably set minimum profit requirement two months consecutively, the company reserves the right to terminate their employment with Flashbay Limited.

The monthly ‘minimum sales profit requirement’ is set understandably low.

Adjustment to Minimum Profit Requirement if you are on Holiday

Your minimum profit requirement will be alleviated by a factor of half a day for every full day of holiday you take.

For example:

If you take 5 days holiday and have a monthly minimum profit requirement of £9,000. 20 working days per month = £9,000 target 15 working days worked = (17.5/20 x £9,000) = £7,875 target

Minimum Daily Activity Requirement

All sales account management staff will be set a minimum daily activity requirement (MDAR). You will not receive new leads on a given day if you fail to meet your MDAR on the previous working day.

Phone MDAR = 32 unique inbound + outbound customer calls Email MDAR = email score of 45