Explain Personal Selling and the role that professional sales people play.

Personal selling is a face-to-face communication between seller and buyer to make a sale. Simply put, Personal selling is selling personally. A personal presentation or demo is given by the seller to the potential buyer.

It is a direct presentation of a product to a potential customer by a representative of an organisation selling the product. Personal selling is an important arm of business-to-business promotion activity as the buyers need detailed demo of the product. The products are generally expensive and complex in their functioning. For example, generators, rotary encoders, PLC machine, and the likes.

This mode helps the seller to come in direct contact with the buyer. It is carried out by the sales people or agents of the seller and can have one or more prospect buyers. It is a personal conversation and may not result in sales but the organisation is greatly benefitted by getting first-hand information from the customers (interested or not, feedback, expectations, etc.).

For example, sales representatives from an organisation personally meeting potential buyers by visiting their offices or homes.

It becomes highly important part of promotion strategy if the market is highly concentrated, product has high unit price, is complex and requires demonstration. Furthermore, when a new product is launched or product is to be as per the individual needs (tailor made), personal selling is given more priority than other promotion tools.

Sales people are one of the most expensive element in an organisation. Hence, they have targets to meet, and generate business to justify the high incentives and salaries paid to them.

The job of a Sales professional –
Sales people are organisations representatives. But they also act as customer’s messengers when they go back to the organisation with the customer’s request of some product modification, faster delivery, price changes, etc. A sales person fulfils a social responsibility when he acts as a responsible medium between the seller and the buyer. If the product doesn’t meets the customer’s requirement, the sales person should not make false claims and make a sale. Instead, he/ she should uphold ethical responsibility as a sales person.

The selling of products by sales people varies from role to role.

The Deliverer is concerned about delivering physical products to a wholesaler or retail outlets.
Order getters actively seek new customers and encourage existing customers to buy the company products.
Order takers are salesmen based in the organisation like a salesman standing behind the counter or taking orders on the telephone.

Support personnel facilitate the selling of products but are not directly involved in sales.

a) Missionary salespeople – they create demand. They meet or call on the dealers, middlemen, customers to promote the products. For example, a representative of a pharmaceutical company do not sell products to doctors but encourage them to prescribe the company’s products.

b) Technical salespeople – they give technical assistance to the existing customers like installation, its design and quality.

Getting business is the core of the sales job. The salespeople are also a source of lot of information about the customers, competitors, customer reactions, problems customers face in delivery and returns, servicing the product issues, etc.

In all, given the types of activities involved, the salesperson may be required to have sound technical knowledge about the product as well as the selling ability to convince the customer how the product matches his need and want.

Types of Salesmen-
There are basically 4 types of salesmen-

1) Manufacturer’s salesmen – there are different roles that manufacturer’s salesmen perform. Missionary sales men come under this category. They meet or call on the dealers, middlemen, customers to promote the products. For example, a representative of a pharmaceutical company do not sell products to doctors but encourage them to prescribe the company’s products.The Merchandise salesmen work with dealers in designing the store layout, display, demos for dealer salesmen, and even working for them in some cases. Dealer servicemen share samples with dealers and take orders. Technical salesmen also fall under this category. They give technical assistance to the existing customers like installation, its design and quality.

2) Wholesaler’s salesmen – these salesmen mainly deal with retailers. They take orders from retailers, collect payments and arrange credit facility with retailers. They are also a great source of market trends.

3) Retail salesmen – they may work within the store or travel sometimes. Main qualities that the retail salesmen should have- maintaining products in attractive way on shelves, helping and guiding customers in making decisions, knowledgeable about different about different products and having a pleasant and helping attitude.

4) Speciality salesmen – they sell expensive products like refrigerators, washing machines, furniture. They may be employed by manufacturer as well as dealers. They are well trained and have sound technical know-how to answer customer’s queries.