Chapter 13

• Discuss the role of a company’s salespeople in creating value for customers and building customer relationships.
• Identify and explain the six major sales force management steps.
• Discuss the personal selling process, distinguishing between transactionoriented marketing and relationship marketing.
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• Define direct marketing and discuss its benefits to customers and companies.
• Identify and discuss the major forms of direct marketing.
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The Nature of Personal
Selling
• Most salespeople are well-educated, well-trained professionals who work to build and maintain long-term customer relationships.
• The term salesperson covers a wide range of positions:
 Order taker: Department store clerk
 Order getter: Creative selling in different environments
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The Role of the Sales Force
• Personal selling is a paid, personal form of promotion.
• Involves two-way personal communication between salespeople and individual customers.
• Salespeople:
 Probe customers to learn about problems
 Adjust marketing offers to fit special needs
 Negotiate terms of sales
 Build long-term personal relationships
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The Role of the Sales Force
• Sales Force serves as critical link between company and its customers.
 They represent the company to the customers
 They represent the customers to the company
 Goal = customer satisfaction and company profit
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• Territorial : Salesperson assigned to exclusive area and sells full line of products.
• Product : Sales force sells only certain product lines.
• Customer : Sales force organizes along customer or industry lines.
• Complex : Combination of several types of structures.
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• Conduct business from their offices via telephone or visits from perspective buyers.
• Includes:
 Technical support people
 Sales assistants
 Telemarketers
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• Used to service large, complex accounts.
• Can include experts from different areas of selling firm.
• Pitfalls:
 Can confuse or overwhelm customers
 Some people have trouble working in teams
 Hard to evaluate individual contributions
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Recruiting and Selecting
Salespeople
• Key talents of salespeople:
 Intrinsic motivation
 Disciplined work style
 Ability to close a sale
 Ability to build relationships with customers
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• Recommendation s from current sales force
• Employment agencies
• Classified ads
• Web searches
• College students
• Recruit from other companies
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Sales Force Training Goals
• Learn about and identify with the company.
• Learn about the company’s products.
• Learn customers’ and competitors’ characteristics.
• Learn how to make effective presentations.
• Learn field procedures and responsibilities.
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Compensating Salespeople
• Fixed amount:
 Salary
• Variable amount:
 Commissions or bonuses
• Expenses:
 Repays for job-related expenditures
• Fringe benefits:
 Vacations, sick leave, pension, etc.
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• Directing Salespeople
 Help them identify customers and set call norms.
 Specify time to be spent prospecting
 Annual call plan
 Time-and-duty analysis
 Sales force automation systems
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• Motivating Salespeople
 Organizational climate
 Sales quotas
 Positive incentives:
 Sales meetings
 Sales contests
 Recognition and honors
 Cash awards, trips, profit sharing
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The Personal Selling Process
• Prospecting: The salesperson identifies qualified potential customers.
• Preapproach: The salesperson learns as much as possible about a prospective customer before making a sales call.
• Approach: The salesperson meets the customer for the first time.
• Presentation: The salesperson tells the “product story” to the buyer, highlighting customer benefits.
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The Personal Selling Process
• Handling Objections: The salesperson seeks out, clarifies, and overcomes customer objections to buying.
• Closing: The salesperson asks the customer for an order.
• Follow-up: The salesperson follows up after the sale to ensure customer satisfaction and repeat business.
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• Direct marketing consists of direct connections with carefully targeted individual consumers to both obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships.
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The New Direct-Marketing
Model
• Some firms use direct marketing as a supplemental medium.
• For many companies, direct marketing constitutes a new and complete model for doing business.
• Some firms employ the direct model as their only approach.
• Some see this as the new marketing model of the next millennium.
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Benefits of Direct
Marketing
• Benefits to Buyers:
 Convenient
 Easy to use
 Private
 Ready access to products and information
 Immediate and interactive
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Benefits of Direct Marketing
• Benefits to Sellers:
 Powerful tool for building customer relationships
 Can target small groups or individuals
 Can tailor offers to individual needs
 Can be timed to reach prospects at just the right moment
 Gives access to buyers they could not reach through other channels
 Offers a low-cost, efficient way to reach markets
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• An organized collection of comprehensive data about individual customers or prospects, including geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data.
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• Accounts for more than 36% of all direct-marketing sales.
• Used in both consumer and B2B markets.
• Can be outbound or inbound calls.
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• Involves sending an offer, announcement, reminder, or other item to a person at a particular address.
• Accounts for more than 31% of direct-marketing sales.
• Permits high target-market selectivity.
• Personal and flexible.
• Easy to measure results.
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• With the Internet, more and more catalogs going electronic.
• Print catalogs still the primary medium.
• Expected sales in 2008 = $176 billion.
• Harder to attract new customers with
Internet catalogs.
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Direct Response TV
Marketing
• Direct-response advertising
• Infomercials
• Home shopping channels
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• Information and ordering machines generally found in stores, airports, and other locations.
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Public Policy and Ethical
Issues in Direct Marketing
• Irritation to Consumers
• Taking unfair advantage of impulsive or less sophisticated buyers
• Targeting TV-addicted shoppers
• Deception, Fraud
• Invasion of Privacy
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Rest Stop: Reviewing the Concepts
1.
Discuss the role of a company’s salespeople in creating value for customers and building customer relationships.
2.
Identify and explain the six major sales force management steps.
3.
Discuss the personal selling process, distinguishing between transaction-oriented marketing and relationship marketing.
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Rest Stop: Reviewing the Concepts
4.
Define direct marketing and discuss its benefits to customers and companies.
5.
Identify and discuss the major forms of direct marketing.
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