In today’s competitive market salesperson’s role is not just to sell the product. In present globalized world products are changing very rapidly. It all depends over customer taste. So identify the customer tastes is typical job for sales department.
Personal Selling is a two way communication and oral presentation. It is flexible and extremely effective. As well as it is effective in other hand it is costly form of sales promotion. It promotes long term business relations through personal intimacy. Today, personal selling has become a challenging and rewarding profession.
In personal selling, a sales person has to deal with an individual client, take account of the personal style and attitude. If a sales person is meeting clients in a group, then it is important to distinguish the different individuals who made up the group. In the interaction, the salesman should adapt his style and behave appropriately to the different group members who are present.
In order to be successful, a salesperson must possess a set of personal, product related and functional qualities. Various analytical and administrative duties are important components of the job. Before approaching a prospect every salesperson is advised to do a bit of homework regarding the company’s name, size authority, concern and general requirements. The salesperson should introduce himself, his company the product under promotion, product presentation and overcome any customer objections.
STEPS IN PERSONAL SELLING
Successful personal selling calls for an integrated approached devised from the experience of the sales personnel. The approach are figured in following figure-
Presentation and Demonstration- In the very first stage of Personal selling, a salesperson represents himself on the behalf of his company and tells about his product and service for which he is available there and tries to attract his customer by telling features of his item during demonstration. This action initiates the curiosity to know more about the product in customer’s mind.
Holding Objectives- During this stage a sales person give his demo article to customer to use it. When customer holds it in his hand and use the features one by one of that product will be a good shine for salesperson to move on next step.
Closing- Now salesperson wants to know about the customer mind whether he is happy and interested to buy or not. If he need something else then the salesperson show the another one otherwise he will negotiate to buy that one and will close the deal.
Follow-up- This is the final and important step not for personal selling even for all products i.e. follow-up. We always try to get feedback from the user to improve our product or service quality and which is beneficial for both company growth and also for customer’s point of view.
THEORY OF PERSONAL SELLING
There are three main theories of personal selling, which are as follows-
1. AIDAS Theory
– The proponents of this theory believe that a salesperson should design his presentation in such a manner which takes care of all these stages of the process of selling.
Attention: The salesperson should attract the prospect to his presentation before he actually goes into the details of the same.
Interest: Once the salesperson has successfully gained the prospect’s attention, he/she should maintain interest of the prospect throughout the presentation.
Desire: The next step in the sales process, as per the AIDAS theory, is to create a strong desire in the prospect’s mind to purchase his product.
Action: Once the salesperson has been successful in taking his prospect through the three stages. It would be interesting for us to understand that even after going through three stages attention, interest and desire; the prospect may still have some doubt or some inertia which will stop him for taking the final decision of actually buying the product. Now it’s important task to salesperson to help his prospect in taking the final decision.
Satisfaction: Once the prospect has placed an order, the salesperson ensures that the prospects carry the impression of having the right decision. He should always thank the prospect and even go to the extent of saying “I appreciate your choice sir, you have taken an excellent decision”.
This is how AIDAS theory works to become a successful salesperson.
2. Right Set of Circumstances Theory –
If the salesperson is successful in securing the prospect’s attention, maintaining his interest and including his desire to buy the product, sales will result. Moreover, if the salesperson is highly skilled, he will control of the presentation, which would lead to sale.3. Buying Formula Theory –
The buying formula theory is based on the analysis of the sequence of events that goes in the buyer’s mind during the sales presentation. The sequence of events in a prospect’s mind can be represented as-
Difference between Advertisement and Personal Selling
From a broad prospective, both personal selling as well as advertising are the means to communicate with the target customers for the product or service of an organisation. Both are the important components of marketing mix. There are some notable differences between these two means of communication.
While the personal selling effort is two way communication process, advertising is a one way communication.
In the personal selling situation salesperson that represents his organization, comes direct in contact with customers and in which customer can ask many number of questions. So as being representative it is his responsibility to satisfy his/her queries. In advertising, in the other hand, customer does not come in direct contact with any representative of the organization.
Advertising has a major role during the pre-purchase phase as the mass demands for the product has to be generated. Personal selling on the other hand has an important role to play in all the three phases (pre-purchase, purchase, post-purchase). It plays an important role in purchase phase.
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