Page 515 - Foundations of Marketing

482 Part 6 | Promotion Decisions

For many organizations, targeting customers with appropriate personal selling techniques and
messages can play a major role in maintaining long-term, satisfying customer relationships,
which in turn contribute to company success. Marketing strategy development should involve
the sales organization during all stages of development and implementation. Top managers need
extensive feedback from the sales force. Managers should strive to make information transparent
and jointly analyze sales data. Sales managers should communicate marketing strategy in a lan-
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guage with which salespeople feel comfortable. As we saw in Chapter 15 , personal selling and
sales promotion are two possible elements in a promotion mix. Personal selling is sometimes a
company’s sole promotional tool, and it is becoming increasingly professional and sophisticated,
with sales personnel acting more as consultants, advisers, and sometimes as partners.
In this chapter, we focus on personal selling and sales promotion. We first consider the
purposes of personal selling and then examine its basic steps. Next, we look at types of sales-
people and how they are selected. After taking a look at several new types of personal selling,
we discuss major sales force management decisions, including setting objectives for the sales
personal selling Paid
personal communication that force and determining its size; recruiting, selecting, training, compensating, and motivating
attempts to inform customers salespeople; managing sales territories; and controlling and evaluating sales force perfor-
and persuade them to buy prod- mance. Then we examine several characteristics of sales promotion, reasons for using sales
ucts in an exchange situation promotion, and sales promotion methods available for use in a promotion mix.

LO 1 . Understand the nature of THE NATURE OF PERSONAL SELLING
personal selling.
Personal selling is paid personal communication that attempts to inform customers and per-
suade them to purchase products in an exchange situation. For example, an HP salesperson
describing the benefits of the company’s servers, PCs, and
printers to a small-business customer is engaging in personal
selling. Likewise, a member of the American Marketing
Association (AMA) manning a table at an event engages in
personal selling to inform interested parties about the ben-
efits of joining the AMA. Personal selling gives marketers
the greatest freedom to adjust a message to satisfy custom-
ers’ information needs. It is the most precise of all promotion
methods, enabling marketers to focus on the most promising
sales prospects. Personal selling is also the most effective
way to form relationships with customers. Edward Jones
advertises that it has 11,000 financial sales advisors to pro-
vide face-to-face attention to 7 million investors. The adver-
tisement makes it clear that face-to-face personal interaction
is superior to a telephone call center. Personal selling is per-
haps most important with business-to-business transactions
involving the purchase of expensive products. Because of the
high-risk factors involved, personal selling is often neces-
sary to assure prospective customers about the quality of the
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product and answer any questions. Despite these benefits,
personal selling is generally the most expensive element in
the promotion mix. The average cost of a sales call is more
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than $ 400 .
Courtesy of Edward Jones selling. Sales careers can offer high income, a great deal
Millions of people earn their living through personal
of freedom, a high level of training, and a high degree of
job satisfaction. Although the public may harbor negative

of salespeople are changing thanks to the efforts of major
The Importance of Personal Selling perceptions of personal selling, unfavorable stereotypes
Edward Jones engages in personal selling as a superior way to corporations, professional sales associations, and academic
form relationships with customers. institutions. Personal selling will continue to gain respect

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