Personal Selling and Sales Management - Case Study Example

Introduction Sales management constitutes an integral component of marketing exercise. It is a broader domain including personal selling where tactics and strategies to create demand and market the product are developed and implemented. Personal selling had been forgotten for many years but competition has again made it a preferred mode of product launch and influence the purchase decision of the buyer. Personal selling involves a two-way communication and sharing of information and ideas whereby the seller aims to reinforce the sales through a face-to-face encounter with the buyer. This process is accompanied and facilitated by clear description of product features by the seller in front of the buyer and subsequent objection handling. This report aims to throw light upon some implicit ideas behind personal selling along with an explanation of its types, principles and the overall personal selling process. How behaviour of the buyer and external forces shape the personal selling mechanism are also discussed. Elements of communication mix Effective marketing is a direct result of effective communications. In the broader domain of marketing, the communication mix involves personal selling, sales promotion, advertising, public relations, direct marketing, packaging, sponsorship and e-marketing. The aim of communications mix elements is to generate awareness and educate buyers about the product features and their related benefits to them. The two prime objectives of communications mix are gaining attention of the buyer and developing interest towards new product proposition. The attention grasping part is undertaken by the advertising component where by the use of concise and direct and appealing messages, product attributes, pricing information and availability details of the product are made available to the consumers. The consumer tries to align his specific needs with that of the advertised message and explores further. This attention arousal forms the background for personal selling process where it becomes easier to convince the buyer to close the deal in favour of the seller. Interest development is facilitated by the salesperson who through his ability to judge the preferences and likings of the buyer group and pitching in the product at the same frequency, tries to convert the product features into customer benefits. Handling the objections and queries of the prospective buyer in a disciplined and known way makes the buyer more acceptable to close the deal and buy the proposed product. How understanding of buyer behaviour influences personal selling? The buyer behaviour is based on the premise of value proposition and value offering. Customers purchase only those products which are felt worth of the investment made and add value to the money. Personal selling is mostly a relationship building exercise where the seller or the salesperson focuses on winning the attention and purchasing power of the buyer by determining his exact needs and aligning the proposed product so that the customer makes a purchase decision. An understanding of buyer behaviour will allow the salesperson to convert the product features into customer benefits, which is a cornerstone to the success of personal selling process. Getting engaged in a dialogue, convincing the customer to buy the product or handling queries and objections will not work unless and until the salesperson is equipped of the prevailing buyer pattern in the market. Buyer behaviour is actually influenced by many factors like prices, substitutes, peer and influential groups, environmental and other factors, et cetera. Knowledge of such things is quintessential to the salesperson to make an impact on the mind of the buyer and convince him as to how his product is better than that of its competitors. For instance, if the market demand is going for herbal and eco-friendly products, you cannot assume the buyer to purchase non-herbal products since it will be against the prevailing buyer pattern. Similarly, if a buyer has been a consistent purchaser of the rival product and you pitch in your product without prior knowledge, your effort would be nipped in the bud. Thus, an understanding of the buyer behaviour helps salesperson to frame questions and align product features according to specific customer demands. Also, with knowledge of consumer buying pattern, salesperson can determine the types of situations he would be facing, identify the customer benefits that can be met or not and also the questions that could be shooted by the customer or not. Thus, it can also serve as a research tool to develop new products and even control the existing ones. Environmental and managerial forces affecting personal selling Both internal and external factors do shape up the personal selling process and the philosophy involved in it. Internally, managerial forces affecting the personal selling process are the organizational policies, dedication and openness of the developers and managers in exercising marketing and personal selling practices, training and development sessions for salespersons and compensation and incentive plans developed to motivate the sellers. Personal selling is a dedicated and trustworthy job with flair of interest and understanding demanded. This can be gained only when the sellers are motivated enough to take keen interest in equipping themselves with the product features and details, reflecting the success in the form of closed deals with customers. External environment also impacts the personal selling process in the way that both the customers and the competitors exist and most of the product and price decisions are shaped up by taking into account the strategies adopted by the rivals. What is the prevailing buyer behaviour, how rivals are anticipating market demand and what steps are being taken by them and how could their strategies be surpassed by innovative and unique selling propositions are determined through such externalities. Types of personal selling Fundamentally, there are two forms of personal selling which are divided on the basis of purpose and nature. These are: Creative personal selling- it is the visible form of imagination and resourcefulness. Whenever a new product or offering is developed and is introduced in a new or an existing market, creative personal selling is used. The focus of creative personal selling is to create demand in the market for the new product by educating and alluring the customers. It aims at making the customer “realize” that the product can be used to change his “need” into “demand”. Creative selling usually emerges in situations like selling intangible products like insurance and banking services, highly technical products like computers and fashion sales. For instance, Hewlett-Packard masters its supply chain through efficient sales force which try to educate the people and demonstrate the features of their products. Its effective salesmanship has helped it garner major market share. Competitive personal selling- competitive personal selling is the talk of the town today because it seeks to develop changes in appearance and production of products according to the available substitutes in the market. Additionally, there are order getters and order takers as types of personal selling salespersons. Order takers are routinised order processors who work on already sold products and try to maintain the ongoing relationship with the customer. Order takers can be inside or outside. An order getter is a stereotype salesperson who generates leads by identifying prospective buyers and educating and persuading the buyers to purchase the product or service and also exercise follow up on the purchase decision of the buyers. Order getters are entrusted with great deal of creativity and responsibility as they are supposed to be equipped with latest know how of market demand, preferences and product attributes. Principles of personal selling Personal selling is an ancient art that has evolved through ages and works on a few essential principles namely: Sales professionalism- sales professionalism is determined through the category which the salesperson falls in- an active or a passive order getter. Professionalism is also judged through the use of customer oriented approach where the emphasis is on problem solving or sales oriented approach where aggressive selling techniques are exercised. The motto of sales professionalism is to make the customer understand his needs on his own so that less of doubts and susceptibility to revert back are minimized. Negotiation- negotiation skills are yet another area upon which the personal selling process rests. As opined by Getty, the buyer should also be allowed to make some money out of the deal because if the seller himself makes the most of the money, there will be less of deals in his kitty. Negotiation has to be done on issues of price and other factors and most importantly, the seller has to keep in mind not to make deep concessions that affect the profitability in a negative way. Relationship marketing- personal selling is a marketing endeavour projected for long run. It is about securing and maintaining long term relations with esteemed customers so that they feel they are getting valued offerings and subsequently, their switching chances are minimized. Relationship marketing is facilitated by better understanding of consumer preferences and offering them something which the rivals are not doing. This is engrained in better service and suggesting creative solutions to customer problems. The personal selling process: building relationships The personal selling process can be deemed to be more of a relationship building exercise than just selling of a product or service for profit objective. Undoubtedly profit is earned when a product is sold, but the objective of personal selling process rests on the premise that satisfied and loyal customer will purchase every time they come and switching chances are lessened, if long term relationship is maintained with the esteemed customers. Discussing further, personal selling process works just like a real life interaction process where first the stranger is analyzed and prospected, communication channel is built, interaction is done and finally, through persuasion and interest development, sale is realized when the customer actually agrees to buy the product (Weitz & Bradford 241). A detailed picture of the successive steps in the personal selling process is: Prospecting- the reason why personal selling was losing significance was the wrong lead generation. Prospecting is all about finding suitable people that have the potential and interest in the product. Definitely, baby products cannot be sold to young people. Thus, prospecting refers to finding out apt people and accessing them so that resources do not get wasted. In this regard, an approach is devised where categories of people and made whose needs match with the product characteristics. Moreover, the categories are ranked to eliminate those who are least likely to buy the product. Pre-approach- even categorization is not complete till each and every prospect is analyzed carefully. Might be superficially it seems that a particular person could be a prospective buyer, but on analysis, it might be revealed that his expectations do not match the product specifications. This exercise is essential to secure the resources involved and make optimum use of them. This pre-approach involves gathering information about the prospects like personal details, buying pattern, income and expenditure record, et cetera. Approaching the prospect- approaching the prospect will become easier and successful if the background work is done properly, that is information collection. This is so because of the sales person is equipped with the relevant information and details there are better chances of him convincing the customer. The prospect is approached in a way that the first impression impacts the customer. Samples and planned meeting will simplify the task. Sales representation- this is perhaps the scariest aspect of personal selling process because under or over confidence of the salesperson can ruin the entire proposition. This is the phase where actual interaction occurs regarding the business. It is advised to promote and present the product in a way that demonstrates usefulness of the product to the customer, rather listing the advantages endlessly where the customer feels unable to match the product with his “need”. Sales representation phase is actually a phase which tests the skills and capabilities of the sales person as to how tactically he educates the prospect about features that align his perceptions and requirements, able to hold on the interest level through out the conversation and communicate in a persuasive manner. Generally, a prospective customer generates interest towards any offering if he feels the product will satisfy one of his unmet demands. If the product features are presented in a way that look like a story telling to the customer with an association with the actual life of the customer, the chances of customer behaving in a favorable manner increases. Being a two-way communication stage, it is essential that the salesperson do listening and not only talking. This is so because it is more important to know what the customer demands than vomiting out the product features. Listening to the customer will enable judge the customer well and make the product proposition clearer in his mind. Objection handling- personal selling is not a smooth sail. It will be insane to assume that all the customers will approve the proposition instantly. This will rather be an exaggerated statement because of the customer do not present objections or doubts, it means he was not attentive enough or lost the course of conversation. The salesperson should be open to handle doubts and objections because this is the chance where he can turn lost offers into opportunities. Ideally, the salesperson should judge by the behavior and talks of the customer that he is developing some objections or doubts, but still, if encountered, it is advised to be polite and represent the product proposition in a way that not only removes the doubt, but also creates a new look in the mind of the customer. For instance, a particular flavor of the product might not be acceptable by the customer and he raises objection against the offering. For this, the salesperson should try to determine the taste of the customer and present another similar offering that matches his taste. Closing the deal- often sales people traverse successfully through the process but stumble at the last step. They either fail to decipher positive buying signals from the customer or do too much of talking that the customer stops saying any thing. Sometimes, even offers and discounts have to be presented to make the deal weighted and attractive. It is mandatory to note that sometimes, customer gives positive signals throughout the personal selling process but fails to acknowledge the offer because of competitive deals or liking towards another substitute product. This has to be taken care of by surpassing the benefits provided by the competitor. Closing the deal should also involve finalizing about the delivery, packaging and payment details. Follow up- what if any of the promises made during sales representation and closing the deal are not met? Hence, it is essential that whatever has been promised to be delivered should be done to the exact specifications as customer once lost never comes back and will spread negative word of mouth also. If the commitments are met, he will feel satisfied and this feedback is valuable to gain to better the services and turn the customer into a profitable one who makes the product his first choice. Reference Weitz, B & Bradford, K. “Personal Selling and Sales Management: A relationship marketing perspective.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 27.2 (1999): 241-254. Read More