BUS203: Principles of Marketing

Considerable differences exist in the various kinds of selling tasks. Early writers provided two-way classification of selling jobs, consisting of service selling, which focuses on obtaining sales from existing customers, and developmental selling, which is not as concerned with immediate sales as with converting prospects to customers.

FIGURE 8.5 Differences in personal selling and mass promotion

Most sales positions require some degree of both types of selling. Sales jobs can be classified on a continuum of service selling. Sales jobs can be classified on a continuum of service selling at one end to developmental selling at the other. Nine types of sales jobs are classified on this continuum (see Figure 8.6).

Service selling: • Inside order taker • Delivery salesperson • Route or merchandising salesperson • Missionary salesperson • Technical salesperson Developmental selling: • Creative salesperson of tangibles • Creative salesperson of intangibles Developmental selling requiring high degree of creativity: • Indirect salesperson • Salesperson engaged in multiple sales

FIGURE 8.6 A continuum of personal selling positions

Service selling involves the following participants:

1. Inside order taker-predominantly waits on customer; for example, the sales clerk behind the neckwear counter in a men's store.
2. Delivery salesperson-predominately engaged in delivering the product; for example, persons delivering milk, bread, or fuel oil.
3. Route or merchandising salesperson-predominantly an order taker, but works in the field; for example, the soap or spice salesperson calling on retailers.
4. Missionary salesperson-position where the salesperson is not expected or permitted to take an order but to build goodwill or to educate the actual or potential user; for example, the distiller's missionary and the pharmaceutical company's detail person.
5. Technical salesperson-major emphasis is placed upon technical knowledge; for example, the engineering salesperson who is primarily a consultant to client companies.

Developmental selling involves the following participants:

1. Creative salesperson o/tangibles-for example, salespersons selling vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, siding, and encyclopedias.
   
2. Creative salesperson o/intangibles-for example, salespersons selling insurance, advertising services, and educational programs.
   

Developmental selling, but requiring a high degree of creativity, involves the following participants:

1. Indirect salesperson-involves sales of big ticket items, particularly of commodities or items that have no truly competitive features. Sales consummated primarily through rendering highly-personalized services to key decision-makers in customers' organizations.
2. Salesperson engaged in multiple sales-involves sales of big-ticket items where the salesperson must make presentations to several individuals in the customer's organization, usually a committee, only one of whom can say yes, but all of whom can say no. For example, the account executive of an advertising agency who makes presentation to the agency selection committee. Even after the account is obtained, the salesperson generally has to work continually to retain it.
   

While the developmental-service and oriented classifications are helpful to better our understanding of the selling job, there are several other traditional classifications.

Inside Versus Outside Selling Inside selling describes those sales situations in which selling takes place in the salesperson's place of business. Retail selling is inside selling. Outside selling represents situations in which the salesperson travels to the customer's place of business. Most industrial selling situations fall into this category.

Company Salespeople Versus Manufacturer Representatives A manufacturer's representative is an independent agent who handles the related products of noncompeting firms. Generally, these agents are used by new firms or firms that have little selling expertise. Company salespeople work for a particular company and sell only the product manufactured by that company.

Direct Versus Indirect Selling Indirect selling is characterized by situations in which people in the marketing channel are contacted who can influence the purchase of a product. This type of selling occurs in the pharmaceutical industry in which detail salespeople call on physicians in an effort to convince them to prescribe their firm's brand of drugs. Direct salespeople call on the person who makes the ultimate purchase decision.

SELLING INVOLVES EVERYTHING

Salespeople have been taught for years that the key to successful selling is finding out what people need and then doing whatever it takes to fill that need. There are thousands of books and articles based on this principle alone. Recently, however, many sales professionals are discovering a better way to sell.

The real definition of selling has to do with finding out what people or businesses do, where they do it, and why they do it that way, and then helping them to do it better.

The word "need" doesn't appear in that definition at all, because there is no need associated with today's selling. A successful salesperson first asks the prospect about the company's goals before trying to fill an imagined need with the product or service being sold.

Critics of tills approach say that determining what a business does is the same as determining its needs. "It's all semantics," they say. "The word 'do' is the same as the word 'need'". But it's not semantics. There is a major difference in the new sales philosophy.

What does the concept of need-driven sales really mean? For one thing, the word "need" implies that something is missing. For example, if a car has only three wheels, there is a need for a fourth. The driver of the car realizes that something is missing and stops at the nearest tire shop. A business generally has a full complement of tires, or needed items. Even if a business needs something, it does not want a salesperson to call. The needed service or items is bought as soon as the need is recognized. In a proactive sale, the business is running smoothly when the salesperson calls. The salesperson, having been trained in a needs-driven industry, asks the prospect what is missing. The buyer replies that nothing is needed. The salesperson insists that something must be wrong, and attempts to prove that there is a solution to the "pain" the business is experiencing.

There are two possible outcomes to this scenario. The first is that no sale is made. The second is that the salesperson does uncover some deep-seated problem that can be fixed, and a sale is made. But this is an arduous process that pays off all too infrequently.

The top competitor of salespeople today is the status quo. People continue to do what they do because it works. The salesperson is a messenger of change. He or she makes a sale by helping someone improve the way they do business.