Introduction to Personal
Selling and Direct Marketing
Preview
• Role of a company’s salespeople in creating
value for customers and building customer
relationships
• Six major sales force management steps
• Personal selling process, distinguishing between
transaction-oriented and relationship marketing
• Direct marketing and its benefits to customers
and companies
• Major forms of direct marketing
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Nature of Personal Selling
• Most salespeople well-educated, well-trained
professionals who work to build and maintain
long-term customer relationships
• Salespeople cover a wide range of positions
• Order taker: Department store clerk
• Order getter: Creative selling in different
environments
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Role of the Sales Force
• Personal selling is paid, personal form of
promotion
• Involves two-way personal communication between
salespeople and individual customers
• Salespeople
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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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Role of the Sales Force
• Sales force serves as critical link between
company and its customers
• Represents company to customers
• Represents customers to company
• Goal = customer satisfaction and company profit
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Sales Force Management
• Analysis, planning, implementation, and control
of sales force activities
• Includes
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Designing sales force strategy and structure
Recruiting and selecting salespeople
Training salespeople
Compensating salespeople
Supervising salespeople
Evaluating salespeople
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Sale Force Structure
• Territorial
• Salesperson assigned to exclusive area and sells
full line of products
• Product
• Sales force sells only certain product lines
• Customer
• Sales force organized by customer or industry
• Complex
• Combination of several types of structures
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Outside and Inside Sales Forces
• Outside sales force travels to call on customers
in the field
• Inside sales force conducts business from office
via telephone or visits from perspective buyers
• Includes
• Technical support people
• Sales assistants
• Telemarketers
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Team Selling
• Used to service large, complex accounts
• Can find problems, solutions, and sales opportunities
that no single person could find
• Can include experts from different areas of selling firm
• Pitfalls
• Can confuse or overwhelm customers
• Working in teams trouble for some people
• Hard to evaluate individual contributions
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Successful Salespeople
• Careful selection can greatly enhance overall
sales force performance while minimizing costly
turnover
• Key talents of successful salespeople
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Intrinsic motivation
Disciplined work style
Ability to close a sale
Ability to build relationships with customers
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Recruiting Salespeople
• Recommendations
• Searching the Web
from current sales force • College placement
• Employment agencies
services
• Classified ads
• Recruit from other
companies
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Sales Force Training Goals
• Learn about different types of customers and
their needs, buying motives, and buying habits
• Learn how to make effective sales presentations
• Learn about and identify with the company, its
products and its competitors
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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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Supervising Salespeople
• Goal of supervision is to encourage salespeople
to “work smart”
• 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
• Goal of motivating sales force is to encourage
salespeople to “work hard”
• Organizational climate
• Sales quotas
• Positive incentives
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Sales meetings
Sales contests
Recognition and honors
Cash awards, trips, profit sharing
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Personal Selling Process for
Salesperson
• Prospecting
• Identify and qualify potential customers (called
prospects)
• Pre-approach
• Learn as much as possible about prospects before
making sales calls
• Approach
• Meet potential customer for first time
• Presentation
• Tell “product story” to potential buyer, highlighting
customer benefits
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Personal Selling Process (cont.)
• Handling Objections
• Seek out, clarify, and overcome customer
objections to buying
• Turn objections into reasons for buying
• Closing—Ask for an order
• Difficult if lack confidence or feel guilty asking
• Follow-up
• After the sale effort to ensure customer satisfaction
and repeat business
• Selling process is transaction oriented; most firms go
beyond this and attempt to build mutually profitable
relationships
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Direct Marketing
• Direct marketing consists of direct connections
with carefully targeted individual consumers to
both obtain an immediate response and cultivate
lasting customer relationships
• One-on-one communication in which offers are
tailored to needs of narrowly defined segments
• Usually seeks a direct, immediate, and measurable
consumer response
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Benefits of Direct Marketing to
Buyers
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Convenient
Easy to use
Private
Ready access to products and information
Immediate and interactive
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Benefits of Direct Marketing to
Sellers
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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 right
moment
• Gives access to buyers unreachable through
other channels
• Offers low-cost, efficient way to reach markets
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Customer Databases
Organized collection of comprehensive data about
individual customers or prospects, including
• Geographic data
• Demographic data
• Psychographic data
• Behavioral data
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Direct Marketing Forms
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Telephone marketing
Direct-mail marketing
Catalog marketing
Direct-response TV marketing
Kiosk marketing
Online marketing
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Telemarketing
• Used in both consumer and B2B markets
• Can be outbound or inbound calls
• Do-Not-Call legislation has affected
telemarketing industry
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Direct-Mail Marketing
• Involves sending an offer, reminder,
announcement, or other item to person at
particular address
• Permits high target-market selectivity
• Can be personalized and is flexible
• Higher CPM yields better prospects than mass
media
• Easy to measure results
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Catalog Marketing
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Expected catalog sales in 2008 = $175 billion
Although print still primary medium, more and
more catalogs going digital
Advantages of Web vs. print catalogs
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Save on production and mailing costs
Can offer unlimited merchandise (no size constraint)
Allow real-time merchandising—products and prices
changeable instantly
Can spice up with interactive entertainment (games)
and promotions (e.g., daily specials)
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Direct Response TV Marketing
• Direct-response advertising
• TV spots that are 60 or 120 seconds long
• Always contain 1-800 # or Web address
• Infomercials
• A 30 minute or longer advertising program for single
product
• Home shopping channels
• Entire cable channels dedicated to selling multiple
brands, items, and services
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Kiosk Marketing
Information and ordering machines generally found
in stores, airports, and other locations
• Example: In-store Kodak kiosks allow customers to
transfer pictures from digital storage devices, edit
them, and produce high-quality color prints
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Integrated Direct Marketing
• Involves carefully coordinated multiple-media,
multiple-stage campaigns
• Improve response rates and profits by adding media
and stages that contribute more to additional sales
than to additional costs
• Example: Integrating paid ad with response channel
(Web or phone), direct mail, outbound telemarketing,
face-to-face sales call, and continuing
communication
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Public Policy and Ethical Issues
in Direct Marketing
• Irritates consumers
• Takes unfair advantage of impulsive or less
sophisticated buyers
• Targets TV-addicted shoppers
• Deceives, defrauds
• Invades privacy
• Perhaps toughest issue
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Recap—What was Covered?
• Role of a company’s salespeople in creating
value for customers and building customer
relationships
• Six major sales force management steps
• Personal selling process, distinguishing between
transaction-oriented and relationship marketing
• Direct marketing and its benefits to customers
and companies
• Major forms of direct marketing
30