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

422 Chapter 15

The Importance and Role of Personal Selling

Salespeople are
communicators who
build relationships

Personal selling
requires strategy
decisions

Promotion is communicating with potential customers. As the Cisco case sug-

gests, personal selling is often the best way to do it. Almost every company can

benefit from personal selling. While face-to-face with prospects, salespeople can get

more attention than an advertisement or a display. They can adjust what they say

or do to take into consideration culture and other behavioral influences on the cus-

tomer. They can ask questions to find out about a customer’s specific interests. They

can figure out ways to solve customer problems. If, and when, the prospect is ready

to buy, the salesperson is there to ask for the order. And afterward, the salesperson

is there to be certain that the customer is satisfied and that the relationship between

the customer and firm continues to be mutually beneficial.

Marketing managers must decide how much, and what kind of, personal selling

effort each marketing mix needs. Specifically, as part of their strategy planning, they

must decide (1) how many salespeople they need, (2) what kind of salespeople they

need, (3) what kind of sales technology support they need, (4) what kind of sales

presentation to use, (5) how to select and train salespeople, and (6) how to super-

vise and motivate them. The sales manager provides input into these strategy

decisions. Once made, it’s the sales manager’s job to implement the personal sell-

ing part of a marketing strategy.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss the importance and nature of personal selling so

you’ll understand the strategy decisions sales and marketing managers face. These

strategy decisions are shown in Exhibit 15-1.

We’ll also discuss a number of frameworks and how-to approaches that guide these

strategy decisions. Because these approaches apply equally to domestic and international

markets, we won’t emphasize that distinction in this chapter. This does not mean, how-

ever, that personal selling techniques don’t vary from one country to another. To the

contrary, in dealing with anycustomer, the salesperson must be very sensitive to cul-

tural influences and other factors that might affect communication. For example, a

Japanese customer and an Arab customer might respond differently to subtle aspects of

Product Place Promotion Price

Personal

selling

Mass

selling

Sales

promotion

Selection

and training

procedure

Compensation

and motivation

approach

Personal

selling

techniques

Target market

Number and

kind of

salespersons

needed

Sales

technology

support

Exhibit 15-1 Strategy Planning for Personal Selling