Industrial Marketing

Chapter 16 : Personal Selling and Direct Marketing

+Role of Personal Selling

+Industrial Selling Process

+Types of Sales Organizations

+Managing the Sales Force

+Direct Marketing

Chapter Summary

This chapter discusses personal selling and its importance in generating sales for an industrial marketer. Personal selling has an important role to play before the buyer makes the purchase, during the purchase, and after the purchase. The major characteristic of personal selling is that it facilitates one-to-one communication with the customer and hence has ample scope for serving the customer effectively, both as a part of the product offering and as a part of the communications mix.

The industrial selling process consists of a series of seven steps. The salesperson first identifies and then qualifies prospective customers. Then he/she gathers relevant information during the pre-approach stage that would help in the next step of approaching the customer. The salesperson next presents the selling firm’s offerings to these prospective customers and negotiates with them regarding price and delivery terms.

The final two stages include closing the sale, and follow-up on the customers for after-sales service and to generate new referrals from them. Sales organizations can be classified into customer-based organizations, geography-based organizations, product-based organizations, combination organizations, and National Account Programs.

A result-oriented management of the sales force involves recruiting and selecting the right candidates, training them, directing and motivating them, setting appropriate compensation plans, and evaluating their performance regularly. In order to get satisfactory sales volumes, firms need to train their sales force on a regular basis.

Training is required in order to keep the sales personnel abreast of the changing trends in the market and also to improve their skills and personality. Compensation acts a major motivator for the sales force and hence the management has to chart out effective compensation plans for its salespeople.

Another important tool in industrial marketing is direct marketing. With the high costs of personal selling, firms are shifting toward the cost-effective direct marketing. Direct marketing includes direct mail, telemarketing, phone marketing, e-mail marketing, etc.

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