Marketing Management

Unit 4 Delivering Marketing Programs Chapter 14 - Promotion-Decisions and Strategies

Lesson 46 - Personal selling - concept and process

In previous chapter we have discussed about Direct marketing and its growth ,importance and channels of direct Marketing. Let us move on to another component of promotion mix- Personal selling. You all have probably experienced personal selling efforts. Have you ever bought something from the door salesman ? Do you find personal selling efforts worth appreciating or have you found them iritatating? Personal selling is somewhat different from other promotion components . Do you agree ? Lets get started and know it better Students you would agree that personal selling is the most adaptable of all promotion methods because the person who is presenting the message can modify it to suit the individual buyer. However, personal selling is also the most expensive promotion method.

Lets define personal selling now Personal selling is paid personal communication that attempts to inform customers and persuade them to purchase products or services. You would agree that it is the personal selling process that allows marketers the greatest freedom to adjust a message to satisfy customers information needs. Personal selling allows the marketer or seller to communicate directly with the prospect or customer and listen to his or her concerns, answer specific questions, provide additional information, inform, persuade, and possibly even recommend other products or services. It would be interesting for you to know that personal selling is one of the oldest forms of promotion. It involves the use of a sales force to support a push strategy (encouraging intermediaries to buy the product) or a pull strategy (where the role of the sales force may be limited to supporting retailers and providing after-sales service). Let us look at how personal selling facilitates marketers :The greatest freedom to adjust a message to satisfy customers informational needs, dynamic. Most precision, enabling marketers to focus on most promising leads. vs. advertising, publicity and sales promotion Give more information Two way flow of information, interactivity.

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Discover the strengths and weaknesses of new products and pass this information on to the marketing department. Highest cost. Businesses spend more on personal selling than on any other form of promotional mix. Goals range from finding prospects convincing prospects to buy keeping customers satisfiedhelp them pass the word along.

KINDS OF SALESMEN
Let us know about kinds of salesmen . Can you give some examples ? Have you met different kind of sales people ? Following are some categories of sales person A. Salespersons may be order getters, order takers, and support personnel. A single individual can, and often does, perform all three functions. 1. Order Getters. An order getter is responsible for what is sometimes called creative selling: selling the firms products to new customers and increasing sales to present customers. a. An order getter must perceive buyers needs supply customers with information about the firms product, and persuade them to buy the product. b. Order-getting activities fall into two groups. 1. In current-customer sales, salespeople concentrate on obtaining additional sales. 2. In new-business sales, sales personnel seek out new prospects and convince them to make an initial purchase. 2. Order Takers. An order taker handles repeat sales in ways that maintain positive relationships with customers. a. Inside order takers receive incoming mail and telephone orders; they also include salespersons in retail stores. b. Outside (or field) order takers travel to customers. 3. Support Personnel. Sales support personnel aid in selling but are more involved in locating prospects, educating customers, building goodwill for the firm, and providing follow-up service. a. A missionary salesperson usually works for a manufacturer and visits retailers to persuade them to buy the manufacturers products. b. A trade salesperson generally works for a food producer or processor and assists its customers in promoting products, especially in retail stores. A technical salesperson assists the companys current customers in technical matters.

PROS AND CONS OF PERSONAL SELLING

What are the advantages of using personal selling as a means of promotion?

Personal selling is a face-to-face activity; customers therefore obtain a relatively high degree of personal attention The sales message can be customised to meet the needs of the customer The two-way nature of the sales process allows the sales team to respond directly and promptly to customer questions and concerns Personal selling is a good way of getting across large amounts of technical or other complex product information The face-to-face sales meeting gives the sales force chance to demonstrate the product Frequent meetings between sales force and customer provide an opportunity to build good longterm relationships Given that there are many advantages to personal selling, why do more businesses not maintain a

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direct sales force?

Main disadvantages of using personal selling

The main disadvantage of personal selling is the cost of employing a sales force. Sales people are expensive. In addition to the basic pay package, a business needs to provide incentives to achieve sales (typically this is based on commission and/or bonus arrangements) and the equipment to make sales calls (car, travel and subsistence costs, mobile phone etc). In addition, a sales person can only call on one customer at a time. This is not a cost-effective way of reaching a large audience

KNOWING PERSONAL SELLING PROCESS

Let us know how the salesperson proceeds with personal selling efforts .Very commonly known are the following seven steps of personal selling process :1. PROSPECTING 2. PRE-APPROACH 3. APPROACH 4. SALES PRESENTATION 5. HANDLING OBJECTIONS 6. CLOSING SALE 7. FOLLOW UP

1. PROSPECTING - Prospecting refers to identifying and developing a list of potential clients. Salespeople can seek the names of prospects from a variety of sources including trade shows, commercially-available databases or mail lists, company sales records and in-house databases, public records, referrals, directories, and a wide variety of other sources. Prospecting activities should be clearly structured so that they identify only potential clients who fit the profile and are able, willing, and authorized to buy the product or service. Once prospecting is underway, it then is up to the sales professional to qualify those prospects to further identify likely customers and screen out poor leads Let us look at the prospecting methods in brief : Referrals from customers Trading leads with other sales representatives (non-competitive) Internal Lists Purchased lists (some interest) Cold calling (no prior indication of interest) 2. PRE-APPROACH - Before engaging in the actual personal selling process, sales professionals first analyze all the information they have available to them about a prospect to understand as much about the prospect as possible. During the pre approach phase of the personal selling process, sales professionals try to understand the prospects current needs, current use of brands and feelings about all available brands, as well as identify key decision makers, review account histories (if any), assess product needs, plan/create a sales presentation to address the identified and likely concerns of the prospect, and set call objectives. The sales professional also develops a preliminary overall strategy for the sales process during this phase, keeping in mind that the strategy may have to be refined as he or she learns more about the prospect. In brief pre-approach would involve the following :Does the customer have a need that would be filled by the product/service? Is it financially possible for the customer to buy? Can the person make or influence the decision?

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3. APPROACH - The approach is the actual contact the sales professional has with the prospect. This is the point of the selling process where the sales professional meets and greets the prospect, provides an introduction, establishes rapport that sets the foundation of the relationship, and asks open-ended questions to learn more about the prospect and his or her needs. 4. SALES PRESENTATION - During the presentation portion of the selling process, the sales professional tells that product story in a way that speaks directly to the identified needs and wants of the prospect. A highly customized presentation is the key component of this step. At this point in the process, prospects are often allowed to hold and/or inspect the product and the sales professional may also actually demonstrate the product. Audio visual presentations may be incorporated such as slide presentations or product videos and this is usually when sales brochures or booklets are presented to the prospect. Sales professionals should strive to let the prospect do most of the talking during the presentation and address the needs of the prospect as fully as possible by showing that he or she truly understands and cares about the needs of the prospect. 5. HANDLING OBJECTIONS - Professional salespeople seek out prospect objections in order to try to address and overcome them. When prospects offers objections, it often signals that they need and want to hear more in order to make a fully-informed decision. If objections are not uncovered and identified, then sales professionals cannot effectively manage them. Uncovering objections, asking clarifying questions, and overcoming objections is a critical part of training for professional sellers and is a skill area that must be continually developed because there will always be objections. Trust me when I tell you that as soon as a sales professional finds a way to successfully handle all his or her prospects objections, some prospect will find a new, unanticipated objection if for no other reason than to test the mettle of the salesperson. 6. CLOSING SALE - Although technically closing a sale happens when products or services are delivered to the customers satisfaction and payment is received, for the purposes of our discussion I will define closing as asking for the order. There are many closing techniques as well as many ways to ask trial closing questions. A trail question might take the form of, Now that Ive addressed your concerns, what other questions do you have that might impact your decision to purchase? Closing does not always mean that the sales professional literally asks for the order, it could be asking the prospect how many they would like, what color they would prefer, when they would like to take delivery, etc. Too many sales professions are either weak or too aggressive when it comes to closing. If you are closing a sale, be sure to ask for the order. If the prospect gives an answer other than yes, it may be a good opportunity to identify new objections and continue selling. 7. FOLLOW UP - Followup is an often overlooked but important part of the selling process. After an order is received, it is in the best interest of everyone involved for the salesperson to followup with the prospect to make sure the product was received in the proper condition, at the right time, installed properly, proper training delivered, and that the entire process was acceptable to the customer. This is a critical step in creating customer satisfaction and building long-term relationships with customers. If the customer experienced any problems whatsoever, the sales professional can intervene and become a customer advocate to ensure 100% satisfaction. Diligent followup can also lead to uncovering new needs, additional purchases, and also referrals and testimonials which can be used as sales tools.

WHAT SHOULD A GOOD SALESPERSON DO ?

What do you think ? What are the qualities of a good salesperson ? Let us discuss a few of them..
1) Be sincere with people. Too many salespeople are fake and feign interest in their prospects. People are smart and see right through such insincerity. If you are not sincere and honest with everyone you meet then you should not be in sales. 2) It is vitally important to constantly hone your sales and communications skills. Continuous growth
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3)

4) 5) 6) 7) 8)

and training in formal professional selling techniques is also very important. Take training classes, listen to audio cassette professional development tapes, read all the professional development material you can get your hands on, and start a program of self-study and development in sales today if you havent already. First listen to your customer, understand his or her wants and needs, and only then try to determine whether or not you can deliver the product or services to meet those wants and needs. If you approach a prospect with a solution before understanding the problem you are likely to be wrong about the solution. The best salespeople ask a lot of questions and genuinely listen to the answers before speaking again. Your prospects and customers are all different so you should treat them differently. The best sales people listen much more than they talk. Find out what your prospects want and then give it to them. If you think you cannot make sales then you probably should not even try.

Here is something interesting for you.

APPLICATION EXERCISE :
Review the following article. Share Your views. Shorn close personal - VARSHA GUPTA & MALIKA RODRIGUESTIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 1999 12:32:29 AM ] Marketing in the year 2005: Virtually all products are available without going to a store. The customer can access pictures on the Internet, shop among online vendors for the best terms, and click order and payment. Most companies have built proprietary databases containing information on individual customer preferences, and use them to mass-customise their offerings. Businesses are doing a better job of retaining customers by finding imaginative ways to exceed customer expectations. Companies are focusing on building customer share rather than market share. An increasing amount of personal selling is occurring over electronic media, mass TV advertising has greatly diminished. Companies are unable to sustain competitive advantages, and believe that their only sustainable advantage lies in an ability to learn faster and change faster. * Philip Kotler, Kotler on Marketing THROW away those stilettos and clogs. Barefoot days are here. Feel the earth, scream marketers as they wait for the new millennium to unfold. Trying to be heard above the din of the big M, Indian marketers say, Lets go back to the basics. Making consumers want - but more essentially, buy products is what marketing is about. And this what it will always be about, Y2K or not. As Sergio Zyman, former head of marketing at The Coca-Cola Company, has put it, Its the consumer, stupid. Thats what marketers will focus on in the new age. Only, the many ways of getting to the consumer are evolving at the speed of thought. So it seems only fitting that technology will take over marketing, and move it from being a science to sounding like science fiction. On the cutting edge of the century, terms from the lexicons of finance, economics and technologyhave found their way onto marketers tongues. Heres what theyre chanting: E-commerce. Data mining. EVA. Customer value creation. Decommoditisation and dimensionalisation. All these are now considered by various battle-scarred marketing warriors to be essential for survival in the brave new world. But again, while the tools may be getting increasingly complicated, its all being put to a very simple, single-minded purpose - understanding consumers and selling better to them. Its a goal that most marketers are shooting for, as the sun sinks lower on this millennium. Ashok Jain, managing director, Cadbury Schweppes feels that Marketing made itself so complex that it got lost in its own maze of complexity. Sunil Alagh, managing director of Britannia Industries, elaborates on the need for consumer-study: New market-

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ing research will have to focus on understanding in greater depth the moments of consumption for their products. More familiarity wont breed contempt, it will break common ground. Jain adds, The consumer will actually become a customer now. Millennium marketers will be using a different box of tools to get more people to buy more products, more often. In The End of Marketing as We Know It, Sergio Zyman suggests what he calls dimensionalising. Simply, if more customers are to buy more of a product, they will need more reasons to do so. One needs to add newer dimensions to the image of the product in consumers minds. This means looking at consumers in new and more creative ways, to come up with different appeals for the same old selling proposition. This will be imperative, as in the absence of a powerful appeal to the emotions, or the rationale, a consumer will pick on the only differentiator he truly understands: Price. Technology will make things cheaper, and many will be able to afford the things that only a few have so far. Says Subroto Sengupta, professor of marketing at IIM Calcutta, Barefoot marketing will ride again. There will be a great need for no-frills products and services. Walter Viera, president, Marketing Advisory Services Group, warns that it wont be only the mass-market players wholl have to think value. Top-end marketers such as Cartier will have to address the fact that their customers want value even at that price. Its specially important for marketers in this country, feels Rajeev Bakshi, managing director, Cadbury India, as he believes India will be a VFM (value for money) products market. The marketer of tomorrow will cut his teeth selling to the customer of today. A customer who is smarter, savvier, and needs more and better reasons to buy. Thats because customers are being spoilt with increasing choice, theyre becoming more price-sensitive and quality-conscious. Theyll be more focused on self-satisfaction. Helping them achieve the nirvana of customer selfempowerment, will be newer and easier ways to buy - teleshopping, online malls and door-to-door network marketers all offer a reason to choose their products. The key lies in the capacity to excite the consumer. Says Abraham Koshy, professor of marketing, IIM-Ahmedabad: Newer methods and technologies to understand consumers will evolve. These in turn automatically take into account the drive towards providing better value to customers. The concept of relationship marketing will transcend personal relationships to encompass brand relationships. So, come 2000, the customers kingdom will finally come. And then, one will see how successful his most faithful courtiers efforts to keep him satisfied have been.

Point to remember

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