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9: Personal Selling and Sales Management

The concept of "personal selling" involves communicating directly and interactively with individual customers. Traditionally, personal selling was done in person, by salesmen who interacted directly with the customer, and was later extended to telemarketing, and is currently being attempted on the Internet.

(EN: recall this book was published in 2002, so it largely coincides with the abysmal failure of "one to one" marketing online and may reflect more primitive attempts at applying personal selling to the "new" media than are in current use.)

Nature of Personal Selling

Personal selling is chosen over advertising for products with a significant profit margin which consumers are reluctant to purchase, as this method has a few distinct advantages to the seller:

• A prospective buyer can easily ignore advertising, whereas a live salesperson can be pushy or intrusive in order to command their attention
• Salespeople can evaluating whether a given individual is a prospective buyer and avoiding the waste of resources on people who are not worth the effort
• Salespeople can make an interactive pitch, gauging the customer's reaction to the message and adjusting or altering the pitch accordingly

The drawback of personal selling is cost. In most instances, personal selling requires the creation, training, and maintenance of a dedicated sales force, which requires considerable investment in each individual salesperson.

Types of Salespeople

Sales people may be categorized by the market to which they specialize in selling. Another way to categorize salespeople is by their functions.

• Support - The major function of sales support is not to push product, but to maintain customer accounts by providing assistance and after-sale support. In some companies, these are the individuals who take inbound calls. For more complex products (such as technology solutions), a sales support personnel may work closely with the customer throughout the period of ownership.
• Maintenance - Salespeople in a maintenance role seek to maintain and increase sales from existing customers. These are often called "order takers" who serve as a point of contact for customers, and may perform additional functions (delivering and stocking products)
• Missionary - Missionary salespeople assist intermediaries in reselling a product, often by providing training, information, and supporting services to the personnel who will interface with the next consumer in the distribution chain.
• Development - This is the "traditional" salesperson who attempts to develop a market by getting the product into the hands of new customers. Depending on the nature of the product, a development salesperson may engage in hard sales (pushing boxes), soft sales (educating customers on the benefits of purchasing), or consulting (gathering specifications from a customer in order to provide requirements to their own firm)

The Selling Process

The author defines a six-step process for selling, indicating that sales personnel may be specialized in one step, or may handle the full range:

1. Prospecting - Finding qualified potential customers, whether as a method of growth or to replace customers lost to churn. This involves generating leads, then evaluating them to determine whether the prospect is capable of making a purchase.
2. Preparation - Gathering information about a prospect in order to determine how best to approach them
3. Presentation - The salesman's interaction with the prospect, beginning with an initial introduction (also called an "approach" or "opening"), direct information-gathering by interacting with the prospect, and presenting information to the prospect about the product. This may be an informal conversation, a formal presentation, or some combination of the two.
4. Objection-handling - Typical customers to not merely accept the information as given, and regard salesmen with a level of distrust. An experienced or well-prepared salesman will have the knowledge (or a script) to respond to objections and assuage doubts.
5. Closing - The "closing" is the formal agreement between the buyer and the salesman (who represents the seller) to engage in a transaction, which may be an immediate exchange of cash-for-property or a contract to make an exchange in future.
6. Follow-up - An often-neglected step in the sales process is following up after the closing to ensure that the customer is satisfied. While this step is inconsequential to the current sale, it is essential to making the next one and building a client list of regular customers

Sales Management

Sales management involves the tasks to plan, organize, and control a selling effort in which a team of salespeople are involved. This includes HR functions (hiring salesmen, training them, developing them, and motivating them) as well as coordinating their efforts and providing support.

The high level of turnover in sales force is evidence of poor management across the industry: a salesman who is poorly trained and supported does not perform, and those who fail to meet performance goals soon move on (sometimes of their own will). Companies with strong "sales culture" and a track record of good management (solid training and support, more so than generous compensation) tend to retain their salespeople, even in industries that are notorious for high turnover.

Sales Trends

The author enumerates some of the "recent" trends in selling and sales management (EN: quotes around "recent" because the book is from 2002).

• To reduce costs, companies are combining sales with direct marketing, which uses a DM technique (outbound call or mailer) to cast a broad net, then have salesmen who follow up with customers who respond
• Companies are placing greater emphasis on developing salespeople, seeking to increase their competence and retain them for a longer period of time
• Sales is also trending toward more of a "relationship" model with the customer, looking beyond the immediate sale to potential future income from the same customer by gaining repeat business and greater share of wallet
• There is also a trend toward "team selling" in which sales and support personnel who serve a client (generally in B2B sales) become a cross-functional team that provides ongoing support and service
• As markets become global, sales managers are facing the complexities of international selling and the differences in cultures and legal systems
• Technology is having an impact on sales, particularly in the automation of order taking. Extending or integrating information systems enables the purchasing process to be automated between buyer and seller.
• Marketing information systems provides salesmen with a wealth of information that was previously difficult to obtain. Salesman can research a prospect on the Internet and get a complete profile of an existing client's buying behavior from their own business systems.