1. Chapter 14 - Personal Selling…and Direct Marketing
Personal selling: Occurs when a company representative interacts directly with a prospect or customer to communicate about a good or service
“Personal touch” helps develop relationships
Salespeople are the eyes and ears of the firm
Selling/sales management jobs provide high mobility, especially for college grads with marketing background

2. The Role of Personal Selling
Personal selling is more important:
When a firm uses a push strategy
In business-to-business contexts: complex/technical products
With inexperienced consumers who need hands-on assistance
For products bought infrequently (high involvement)
When goods/services are complex or costly
Cost per contact is very high
In business-to-business selling, personal selling is critical when the product is highly complex or technical, and when the nature of the purchase represents a “new task” buy situation for the customer. Personal selling is often undertaken by sales engineers—individuals degreed in areas other than business—when the product being sold must be custom-designed for the buyer (such as when a manufacturing facility purchases a conveyor belt system for a production line).

3. Technology and Personal Selling
Numerous technologies help enhance the selling effort:
Customer relationship management (CRM) software and partner relationship management (PRM)
Teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and improved corporate Web sites
Voice-over Internet protocol
Assorted wireless technologies
SALESFORCE.COM

4. Types of Sales Jobs Sales positions vary considerably: Order taker
Technical specialist
Missionary salesperson (stimulate clients to buy)
New-business salesperson and order getter
Team selling and cross-functional teams
Get the scoop on sales salaries! Visit the Occupational Outlook Handbook!
The Occupational Outlook Handbook link lands on a page listing a number of different types of selling positions. Instructors can ask students which type of position they would like to explore, make that selection, then use the links at the top of the resulting page to quickly find the salary information.
Order takers include in-store salespeople and catalog sales order takers who essentially wait for the customer to initiate a transaction or to place the phone call to a number. Order takers then assist consumers with the paperwork or other transactional aspects of the sale. Order takers typically exhibit little initiative—they do not actively pursue new accounts and rarely exhibit any creative selling techniques.
Technical specialists assist or support in the selling effort. For example, a technical specialist may set up a new piece of equipment when delivered to the customer. Retail demonstrators—such as the “food ladies” in the grocery store who prepare and offer food samples to shoppers—are another form of technical specialist.
Missionary sales people include pharmaceutical sales representatives who visit physicians for the purpose of educating them about the benefits and side effects of prescription drugs, in the hope that the doctors will prescribe their brand to patients as appropriate. Missionary sales people are sometimes called detail sales representatives.
New-business salespeople is a broad term for any sales representative that is responsible for creating new customers. Several specific forms of new business salespeople exist, include account representatives, who service many existing accounts while attempting to attract new business; industrial sales representatives who sell non-technical products such as lubricants that are used in manufacturing; service salespeople who sell ISP or Web design services, long-distance service, or any of a host of other services, and sales engineers, who sell highly technical customized solutions to customers problems.

5. Approaches to Personal Selling
Transactional selling: Focuses on making an immediate sale with little or no concern for developing long-term customer relationships
Associated with high-pressure, hard sell tactics
Relationship selling Process of building long-term customers by developing mutually satisfying, win-win relationships with customers
Builds customer loyalty and satisfaction
Business Week magazine’s online “Savvy Selling” section offers weekly podcasts that feature tips on how to improve sales performance. As many students own iPods or have access to Apple Tunes, it might be nice to visit the site below if you feel some students would be interested in subscribing to the podcast series:

6. Steps in the Creative Selling Process
Many sales leads come from a company’s marketing communications efforts, as well as a firm’s Web site.

7. Sales Management
Process of planning, implementing, and controlling the personal selling function of an organization

8. Direct Marketing
Direct marketing Any direct communication to a customer (consumer or business) designed to generate a response in the form of an order, a request for further information, and/or a visit to a store or other place of business for purchase of a product
Updated statistics regarding the direct marketing expenditures can usually be found in the press release portion of the DMA’s Web site (
According to a press release dated October 18, 2008, investment in direct marketing is still growing at a slightly faster rate than are investments made in general advertising media. However, the recession of 2008 did slow growth in advertising spending across the board.
Updated statistics and forecasts as discussed in this press release:
Direct Marketing Advertising Expenditures:
Actual DM expenditures for 2007 totaled $ billion.
DM expenditures for 2008 are forecast to hit $176.9 billion.
DM expenditures for 2009 are forecast at $183.1 billion.
Direct Marketing Sales:
3.7% revenue growth is forecast for 2008.
Actual sales in 2007 were $1,985 billion.
Forecast sales for 2008 are $2,058 billion.
4.5% increase is forecast for 2009, for total anticipated sales of $2,150 billion.
Source: (
Direct Marketing Association
Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (

9. Direct Marketing Mail order Telemarketing: Catalogs:
Direct mail: A brochure/pamphlet offering a specific good/service at one point in time
Telemarketing:
Direct marketing conducted over the telephone
More profitable for business than consumer markets
In 2003, FTC established National Do Not Call Registry
Do Not Call Registry

10. Direct Marketing
Direct-response advertising: Allows consumer to respond by immediately contacting the provider with questions or an order
Direct-response TV (DRTV): short commercials, 30-minute-plus infomercials, and home shopping networks

11. Direct Marketing
M-Commerce: Promotional and other e-commerce activities transmitted over mobile phones/devices
Short-messaging system marketing (SMS)
Spim: instant-messaging version of spam
Adware: software that tracks Web habits/interests, presenting pop-up ads and resetting home page