Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach

Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e

15. Personal Selling Text © The McGraw−Hill
    Companies, 2002

Personal Selling 423

a salesperson’s behavior. The Arab customer

might expect to be very close to a salesper-

son, perhaps only two feet away, while they

talk. The Japanese customer might consider

that distance rude. Similarly, what topics of

discussion are considered sensitive, how mes-

sages are interpreted, and which negotiating

styles are used vary from one country to

another. A salesperson must know how to

communicate effectively with each cus-

tomer—wherever and whoever that

customer is—but those details are beyond

the strategy planning focus of this text.^2

We’ve already seen that personal selling is important in some promotion blends and

absolutely essential in others. You would better appreciate the importance of personal

selling if you regularly had to meet payrolls and somehow, almost miraculously, your

salespeople kept coming in with orders just in time to keep the business profitable.

Personal selling is often a company’s largest single operating expense. This is another

reason why it is important to understand the decisions in this area. Bad sales manage-

ment decisions are costly in both lost sales and in actual out-of-pocket expenses.

Every economy needs and uses many salespeople. In the United States, one per-

son out of every ten in the total labor force is involved in sales work. By comparison,

that’s about 20 times more people than are employed in advertising. Any activity

that employs so many people and is so important to the economy deserves study.

Looking at what salespeople do is a good way to start.

Good salespeople don’t just try to sellthe customer. Rather, they try to help the

customer buy—by understanding the customer’s needs and presenting the advan-

tages and disadvantages of their products. Such helpfulness results in satisfied

customers and long-term relationships. And strong relationships often form the

basis for a competitive advantage, especially for firms that target business markets.

You may think of personal selling in terms of an old-time stereotype of a sales-

person: a bag of wind with no more to offer than a funny story, a big expense

account, and an engaging grin. But that isn’t true any more. Old-time salespeople

are being replaced by real professionals—problem solvers—who have something

definite to contribute to their employers andtheir customers.

Increasingly, the salesperson is seen as a representative of the whole company—

responsible for explaining its total effort to target customers rather than just pushing

products. The salesperson may provide information about products, explain and

interpret company policies, and even negotiate prices or diagnose technical prob-

lems when a product doesn’t work well.

The sales rep is often the only link between the firm and its customers—

especially if customers are far away. When a number of people from the firm are

involved with the customer organization—which is increasingly common as more

suppliers and customers form closer relationships—it is usually the sales rep who

coordinates the relationship for his or her firm. See Exhibit 7-6.

As this suggests, salespeople also represent their customersback inside their own

firms. Recall that feedback is an essential part of both the communication process

andthe basic management process of planning, implementing, and control. For

example, the sales rep is the likely one to explain to the production manager why

a customer is unhappy with product performance or quality—or to the e-commerce

specialist how better order status information available on the website could help

the customer save money.

Personal selling

is important

Helping to buy is

good selling

Salespeople represent

the whole company—

and customers too