In this chapter, we examine two more marketing communication and promotion tools—personal selling and direct marketing. Both involve direct connections with customers aimed toward building customer-unique value and lasting relationships.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

Personal Selling

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

Robert Louis Stevenson once noted that "everyone lives by selling something." We are all familiar with the sales forces used by business organizations to sell products and services to customers around the world. But sales forces are also found in many other kinds of organizations. For example, colleges use recruiters to attract new students, and churches use membership committees to attract new members. Hospitals and museums use fund-raisers to contact donors and raise money. Even governments use sales forces. The U.S. Postal Service, for instance, uses a sales force to sell Express Mail and other services to corporate customers. In the first part of this chapter, we examine the role of personal selling in the organization, sales force management decisions, and the personal selling process.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

The Nature of Personal Selling

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

Selling is one of the oldest professions in the world. The people who do the selling go by many names: salespeople, sales representatives, account executives, sales consultants, sales engineers, agents, district managers, marketing representatives, and account development reps, to name just a few.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

People hold many stereotypes of salespeople—including some unfavorable ones. "Salesman" may bring to mind the image of Arthur Miller's pitiable Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Or you might think of Meredith Willson's cigar-smoking, backslapping, joke-telling Harold Hill in The Music Man. Both examples depict salespeople as loners, traveling their territories, trying to foist their wares on unsuspecting or unwilling buyers.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

However, modern salespeople are a far cry from these unfortunate stereotypes. Today, most salespeople are well-educated, well-trained professionals who work to build and maintain long-term customer relationships by listening to their customers, assessing customer needs, and organizing the company's efforts to solve customer problems. Consider Boeing, the aerospace giant competing in the rough-and-tumble worldwide commercial aircraft market. It takes more than a warm smile to sell expensive airplanes:

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

Selling high-tech aircraft at $70 million or more a copy is complex and challenging. A single big sale can easily run into billions of dollars. Boeing salespeople head up an extensive team of company specialists—sales and service technicians, financial analysts, planners, engineers—all dedicated to finding ways to satisfy airline customer needs. The salespeople begin by becoming experts on the airlines, much like Wall Street analysts would. They find out where each airline wants to grow, when it wants to replace planes, and details of its financial situation. The team runs Boeing and competing planes through computer systems, simulating the airline's routes, cost per seat, and other factors to show that their planes are most efficient. Then the high-level negotiations begin. The selling process is nerve-rackingly slow—it can take two or three years from the first sales presentation to the day the sale is announced. Sometimes top executives from both the airline and Boeing are brought in to close the deal. After getting the order, salespeople then must stay in almost constant touch to keep track of the account's equipment needs and to make certain the customer stays satisfied. Success depends on building solid, long-term relationships with customers, based on performance and trust. "When you buy an airplane, it is like getting married," says the head of Boeing's commercial airplane division. "It is a long-term relationship."²

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

The term salesperson covers a wide range of positions. At one extreme, a salesperson might be largely an order taker, such as the department store salesperson standing behind the counter. At the other extreme are order getters, whose positions demand the creative selling of products and services ranging from appliances, industrial equipment, and airplanes to insurance, advertising, and information technology services. Here, we focus on the more creative types of selling and on the process of building and managing an effective sales force.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

The Role of the Sales Force

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

Personal selling is the interpersonal arm of the promotion mix. Advertising consists of one-way, nonpersonal communication with target consumer groups. In contrast, personal selling involves two-way, personal communication between salespeople and individual customers—whether face-to-face, by telephone, through video or Web conferences, or by other means. Personal selling can be more effective than advertising in more complex selling situations. Salespeople can probe customers to learn more about their problems, then adjust the marketing offer to fit the special needs of each customer and negotiate terms of sale. They can build long-term personal relationships with key decision makers.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

The role of personal selling varies from company to company. Some firms have no salespeople at all—for example, companies that sell only through mail-order catalogs or companies that sell through manufacturer's reps, sales agents, or brokers. In most firms, however, the sales force plays a major role. In companies that sell business products and services, such as Xerox, Cisco Systems, and DuPont, the company's salespeople work directly with customers. In consumer product companies such as Procter & Gamble and Nike, which sell through intermediaries, final consumers rarely meet salespeople or even know about them. Still, the sales force plays an important behind-the-scenes role. It works with wholesalers and retailers to gain their support and to help them be more effective in selling the company's products.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

The sales force serves as a critical link between a company and its customers. In many cases, salespeople serve both masters—the seller and the buyer. First, they represent the company to customers. They find and develop new customers and communicate information about the company's products and services. They sell products by approaching customers, presenting their products, answering objections, negotiating prices and terms, and closing sales. In addition, salespeople provide customer service and carry out market research and intelligence work.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm

Add/Edit Comments

At the same time, salespeople represent customers to the company, acting inside the firm as "champions" of customers' interests and managing the buyer–seller relationship. Salespeople relay customer concerns about company products and actions back inside to those who can handle them. They learn about customer needs and work with other marketing and nonmarketing people in the company to develop greater customer value. The old view was that salespeople should worry about sales and the company should worry about profit. However, the current view holds that salespeople should be concerned with more than just producing sales—they should work with others in the company to produce customer satisfaction and company profit.

Comments by Dr. Laukamm