Chapter 13 FULL: Personal Selling and Sales Promotion

Involves personal presentations by a sales force to:
- Engage customers
- Make sales
- Build customer relationships
Salesperson:
- Represents a company to customers
- Performs activities like:
  - Prospecting
  - Communicating
  - Selling
  - Servicing
  - Gathering information
  - Building relationships
More than just fast talk and a warm smile is needed for professional selling.
Role of the Sales Force:
- Links the company with its customers.
- Coordinates marketing and sales.

Involves analyzing, planning, implementing, and controlling sales force activities.
Major Steps:
- Designing sales force strategy and structure
- Recruiting
- Selecting
- Training
- Compensating
- Supervising
- Evaluating

Types of sales force structures:
- Territorial
- Product
- Customer (or market)
Specialization of salespeople:
- Customer and territory
- Product and territory
- Product and customer
- Territory, product, and customer
Inside selling is growing faster than in-person selling.
Outside selling is increasingly done over the phone or mobile devices.

Can range from a few to thousands.
Workload approach:
- Accounts grouped by size, status, or effort required.
- Determine the number of salespeople needed for each class of accounts.

Outside sales force (field sales force):
- Travels to call on customers in the field.
Inside sales force:
- Conducts business from their offices via telephone, the Internet, or visits from prospective buyers.
- Includes:
  - Technical sales support people
  - Sales assistants
  - Telemarketers and online sellers
Team selling:
- Teams from different departments service large, complex accounts.

Goals of training:
- Teach about different types of customers.
- How to sell effectively.
- About the company’s objectives, organization, products, and competitors’ strategies.
Online training:
- Uses videos, Internet-based exercises, or simulations.
- Virtual instructor-led training (VILT).

Elements of compensation:
- Fixed amount (salary)
- Variable amount (commissions or bonuses)
A good compensation plan motivates salespeople and directs their activities.

Help salespeople work smart.
Tools of supervision:
- Call plan
- Time-and-duty analysis
- Sales force automation system
How Salespeople Spend Time (approximate percentages):
- Active selling: $37\%$
- Researching accounts, pursuing leads: $22\%$
- Post-sales tasks: $17\%$
- Meetings, administrative: $14\%$
- Travel, training: $10\%$

Encourage hard work toward sales force goals.
Boost morale and performance through:
- Organizational climate
- Sales quotas
- Positive incentives

Gather information from:
- Sales, call, and expense reports
- Monitoring sales and profit performance data
- Personal observation
- Customer surveys
- Talks with other salespeople
Formal evaluations:
- Force management to develop standards for judging performance.

Demonstrating and delivering superior customer value.
Capturing a return on that value that is fair for both the customer and the company.
Requires:
- Listening to customers
- Understanding customers’ needs
- Coordinating the company’s efforts to create lasting relationships based on customer value
Sales management’s challenge is to transform salespeople into company advocates for value.

Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
Targets:
- Final buyers (consumer promotions)
- Retailers and wholesalers (trade promotions)
- Business customers (business promotions)
- Members of the sales force (sales force promotions)
Factors contributing to the rapid growth of sales promotion:
- Product managers view promotion as an effective short-run sales tool.
- Competitors use sales promotion to differentiate their offers.
- Advertising efficiency has declined.
- Sales promotions help attract today’s more thrift-oriented consumers.

Consumer promotions:
- Urge short-term customer buying or boost customer-brand engagement.
Trade promotions:
- Get retailers to carry new items and more inventory, buy ahead, promote the company’s products, and give them more shelf space.
Business promotions:
- Generate business leads, stimulate purchases, reward customers, and motivate salespeople.

Samples:
- Offers of a trial amount of a product
- Most effective but most expensive
Coupons:
- Certificates that save buyers money when they purchase specified products.
Rebates (cash refunds):
- Price reduction occurs after the purchase.
- Customer sends proof of purchase to the manufacturer, which then refunds part of the purchase price by mail.
Price packs (cents-off deals):
- Offers consumers savings off the regular price of a product.
Premiums:
- Goods offered either free or at low cost as an incentive to buy a product.
Advertising specialties:
- Useful articles imprinted with an advertiser’s name, logo, or message that are given as gifts to consumers.
Point-of-purchase (POP) promotions:
- Displays and demonstrations that take place at the point of sale.
Contests, sweepstakes, and games:
- Give consumers the chance to win something.
Event marketing (or event sponsorships):
- Creating a brand-marketing event or serving as a sole or participating sponsor of events created by others.

Used to persuade resellers to carry a brand, give it shelf space, and promote it in ads.
Tools:
- Contests, premiums, and displays
- Discounts and allowances
- Free goods
- Push money
- Specialty advertising items

Used to generate business leads, stimulate purchases, reward customers, and motivate salespeople.
Tools:
- Conventions and trade shows
- Sales contests