Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e- Personal Selling Text © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2002
Eighty percent of the traffic over the
Internet runs on Cisco equipment.
Cisco takes care of customers
with cutting-edge e-commercetechnology at its website
(www.cisco.com) whenever it can.
Distributors also handle some
needs. But Cisco’s own salespeople
handle the job of getting and keep-ing major accounts. Cisco’s sales
force is as central to its success as
its technology. Decisions to invest
millions of dollars in information
technology involve top manage-ment. Cisco’s sales professionals,
like Sue Bostrom, work with these
executives to learn about their
needs and then sell business
solutions rather than “gear.” Ofcourse, a firm’s IT specialists
may also get in the act—and
they want to know about tech-
nical details (“Will Cisco’s
router work with our systemssecurity software?”). Technical
specialists from Cisco’s local sales
office might handle some of these420
Chapter Fifteen
Personal Selling
420
When You
Finish This Chapter,
You Should
1.Understand the
importance and
nature of personal
selling.
2.Know the three
basic sales tasks and
what the various
kinds of salespeople
can be expected
to do.
3.Know how sales
technology affects
the way sales are
performed.
4.Know what the
sales manager must
do—including select-
ing, training, and
organizing salespeo-
ple—to carry out the
personal selling job.
5.Understand how
the right compensa-
tion plan can help
motivate and control
salespeople.
6.Understand when
and where to use the
three types of sales
presentations.
7.Understand the
important new terms
(shown in red).
Cisco Systems, Inc., has enjoyed
enormous growth by “empowering
the Internet generation.” In other
words, what Cisco does is sell thebackroom gear and systems that
large and small businesses, gov-
ernment agencies, schools, and
other organizations need to support
their computer networks, websites,and e-commerce applications.