Now we'll review some strategies you can incorporate in your personal selling process to make the most of your efforts. Personal selling can be a complicated job, especially when dealing with the unpredictability of human preference and behavior.
Here are some personal selling strategies to help diversify the way your team approaches selling to various customers. The first thing your sales reps are selling is themselves. Encourage your team to show empathy and share success stories of current customers to help with this. Your team should listen more than they talk. Also, encourage them not to forget to ask questions about what motivates prospects — this will tell them how to relate your product or service to the needs of prospects.
Once your team learns about what your prospect needs and what motivates them, have reps focus on explaining how prospects will benefit from the product or service.
As your team works with potential customers, they should consider themselves personal advocates. If prospects have any concerns or questions, they should do their best to personally address them. This will allow them to build trust with prospects and move them closer to purchase.
Your team can do this after the sales presentation and after addressing any questions, concerns, or objections. Research and test various closing phrases to see what comes naturally to your sales team.
Following up with customers via phone, email, or in-person keeps the relationship alive, which not only gives you your sales team the opportunity for cross-selling and up-selling, but it also allows you to check in on their level of delight.
Remember, happy customers are your best marketers! Personal selling involves a great deal of tailored communication and interactions with leads and prospects. Email tracking software can alert your team to when potential customers open their emails so they know who's interested and who to follow up with to stay top-of-mind.
There are many personal selling examples beyond the five listed below. We chose these examples because they illustrate significant, sometimes complicated purchase decisions that often require a close relationship between a salesperson and prospect — which further illustrates the personal selling method in action. Most software companies use the personal selling method. For these reasons, personal selling in the software industry becomes necessary to best serve customers. The software salesperson can help customers understand how the software or tool can be tailored to their needs and articulate the features and benefits to others in their organization.
A prime example of personal selling for department-wide software is HubSpot. HubSpot offers a range of software solutions for marketing, sales, and customer service. This requires the sales team to spend time prospecting for good-fit leads and educating prospects and customers about how these tools can help their business. Other examples include Workday for human resources, Slack for business enablement, and Xero for accounting.
Catering companies base their services on events — and because each event is different they must customize their offering based on what each customer needs.
For this reason, caterers often deploy salespeople to make initial contact with and talk to prospects to better understand how the company can serve them. These salespeople are also responsible for building a custom catering plan for customers, managing the execution of the service, and checking up on customers after the event s — all important parts of the personal selling process.
Travel services is another industry that often uses the personal selling method. Because travel and touring services are not a physical product, there's arguably a greater sense of trust needed between the travel company, their salespeople, and each customer to close a deal.
Companies often need to make office-wide equipment purchases — for chairs, computers, desks, and more — when they move into a new space or simply grow. This process typically requires personal rapport between the office equipment salesperson and the business.
Not to mention, office equipment is a competitive space, with many reputable companies offering high-quality products. Real estate, for both individuals and businesses, is a significant purchase. For this reason, real estate sellers and agents are responsible for finding good-fit prospects and helping educate them on how their property is right for them.
There are many ways to execute the personal selling method. What should remain consistent, though, is how your sales team approaches, builds a relationship with, and serves a potential customer. Personal selling centers around a genuine interest in helping customers solve their problems using your product or service — not pushing or forcing a sale for the sake of quotas or the bottom line. Encourage your sales team to use these strategies to build and maintain successful, authentic relationships with your customers, and hopefully help your customers become strong advocates for your brand.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in October, and has been updated for comprehensiveness. Originally published May 5, PM, updated October 08 Logo - Full Color. Therefore, encyclopedias are well suited to a promotion mix that emphasizes personal selling. Highly technical products, such as computers and copiers, are also primarily sold through personal sales methods.
Products that involve a trade-in, like automobiles, are usually handled through personal selling to help facilitate the trade-in process. Finally, a company that cannot afford a mass-advertising campaign might consider personal selling as an alternative to advertising.
Since sales force compensation is largely based on actual sales, personal selling may require less money up front than other parts of the promotion mix. One method that many small manufacturers and wholesalers use to reduce the costs of personal selling—which can be the most critical aspect of the promotion mix for these types of businesses—is to hire an experienced selling agent.
Selling agents are independent salespeople who work under contract with one or more companies and are usually paid a straight commission on sales. Hiring a selling agent allows a small business to save the time and money it would have to invest in recruiting and training an in-house sales force.
In addition, an agent with experience in selling similar products may provide readymade customers and quick entry into a sales territory. Selling agents are particularly helpful for businesses whose products experience seasonal or fluctuating sales, since they are only paid for the sales they make.
The main disadvantages of selling agents are that they usually work for several different firms, so they are unable to devote percent of their attention to any one client, and that it may be difficult to retain the customers gained in this way once the relationship with the agent is severed.
It is also difficult to control the selling methods used by agents, and they may not be able to provide the service that some customers require. There are many different types of personal sales jobs. A driver-salesperson merely delivers the product and has few selling responsibilities. An inside order taker—such as a sales clerk in a retail store or a telephone representative with a catalog sales company—takes orders from within a selling environment and requires some selling skills.
In contrast, an outside order taker goes to the customer's place of business to take orders. Some selling skills are required in this position, especially to establish new accounts. A missionary sales person, rather than selling an actual product or service, instead tries to make a customer feel good about the company and products he or she represents. The pharmaceutical and liquor industries frequently employ missionary salespeople.
A sales engineer might be found in technical industries such as computers and copiers. Sales engineers provide technical support, explain the product, and help adapt the product to the customer's needs. Finally, a creative salesperson may attempt to sell goods such as vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias , but more often represents ideas, such as services insurance or causes charities. These salespeople usually deal with customers who are unaware of their need for the service or product, so they must possess the most developed selling skills of all the types of salespeople.
The many different types of salespeople all go through the same basic steps when making a sale: prospecting and qualifying, preapproach, approach, presentation and demonstration, handling objections, closing, and follow-up. Although training for personal sales forces may vary from one organization to another, the majority of the training will include some version of these steps. Prospecting and qualifying involve locating potential customers and finding out if they are in a position to buy.
Prospecting, or lead-generation, can be as simple as asking current customers for names of acquaintances who may also be interested, or as sophisticated as using a database or mailing list.
Often the company provides leads, but a truly successful salesperson will also be able to generate his or her own leads. Prospecting usually involves an element of cold-calling—that is, calling an unknown potential customer and introducing oneself and the product.
After possible customers have been located through prospecting, a salesperson must qualify them. This entails assessing their readiness and ability to buy. Personal selling almost always requires a salesperson to contact many prospects before completing a sale. The preapproach step involves researching the prospective customer—often another company. The salesperson may read up on the company, talk to other vendors, or study the overall industry.
At this stage, the salesperson will also try to determine the best time to make the sales call and establish sales call objectives. During the next step, the approach, it is crucial for a salesperson to make a positive first impression while introducing himself or herself, the company represented, and the product or service being offered.
It is also important that the salesperson listen carefully to the prospect and respond appropriately. Once the approach has been made, the salesperson should be ready to launch into the demonstration or presentation. Depending on the company and the product or service, there are generally three types of presentations.
However, television demonstration is much limited. Salesman can provide a detail demonstration and can supervise when customer is making the actual use of products. For technical products, it has more relevance. Personal selling can support advertising, sales promotion, and publicity.
It removes the drawbacks of advertising and sales promotion. Advertising increases awareness while personal selling reinforces the advertising message. Similarly, it can make sales promotion tools more effective by personal guidance or conviction.
This is the only market promotion technique that provides an immediate feedback. Salesmanship offers individual services. It can meet personal expectations of buyers.
It leads to customer satisfaction. Sales talks and presentation can be adjusted according to situation to suit individual nature, motives, and problems.
Salesmanship offers triple rewards. It benefits all parties, including customer, salesman, and company. Customer is satisfied with products and services; salesman can achieve his targets; and company can improve its market share and profits.
The detailed explanation about company and its products removes all doubts and misunderstandings. It helps in restoring company image and reputation in market. Related Articles: Salesmanship: Type vs. Benefits or Reasons for Using Ad Agency. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits.
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