1. Personal Selling & Direct Marketing

2. Personal Selling
Personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships.

3. The Role of the Sales Force
The critical link between a company and its customers.
Salespeople:
represent the company to the customers.
represent the customers to the company.
strive to achieve customer satisfaction and company profit simultaneously.

4. Sale Force Organization
Territorial
Sales force organized by geographic area
Product
Salespeople assigned to sell only certain product lines
Customer
Sales force organized by customer or industry
Complex
Combination of several types of structures

5. Team Selling Used to service large, complex corporate accounts
Main advantages:
Can find problems, solutions, and sales opportunities that no single salesperson could
Cross-functional expertise
Goes beyond simple selling of product
More about finding customer solutions to complex issues
Used primarily by “deep-pocket” companies
Also called “Consultative Selling”

6. Major Steps in the Selling Process

7. The Personal Selling Process
Prospecting
Identifying qualified potential customers (prospecting)
Pre-approach
Learning as much as possible about a prospect before making the sales call
Approach
Meeting the customer for the first time
Presentation
Telling the “product story” to the buyer

8. The Personal Selling Process
Handling Objections
Eliciting, clarifying and overcoming customer objections to buying
Closing
Asking the customer for an order
Follow-up
Following up after the sale to ensure customer satisfaction & repeat business
Transaction orientation vs. relationship orientation

9. Personal Selling - Movie

10. Direct Marketing Definition
One-on-one communication in which offers are tailored to the needs of narrowly defined segments.
Seeks a direct, immediate, and measurable consumer response.
Can take many different forms.

11. Forms of Direct Marketing

12. Advantages of Direct Marketing
Powerful tool for building customer long-term customer relationships
Enables “true micromarketing” efforts
Can reach prospects at just the right moment
Provides access to buyers unreachable through other channels
Minimizes “wasted reach”
Effectiveness is easily measured

13. Customer Databases
An organized collection of comprehensive data about individual customers or prospects, including geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data.

14. Telemarketing Used in both consumer and B2B markets
Outbound or Inbound
Inbound consumer telemarketing and outbound business-to-business telemarketing remain strong despite DNC legislations

15. Telemarketing – the end of an industry?
Do-Not-Call legislation forbids most telemarketers to contact phone numbers registered on its Web site
$11,000+ fine per DNC violation
DNC legislation effectively prohibits cell phones telemarketing (cannot call cellphones using auto-dialers)

16. Direct-Mail Marketing
Involves sending a marketing offer to a pre-qualified prospect’s address
Addresses obtained from customer lists
List sources
Companies develop their own databases (i.e. Williams Sonoma)
Buy a list from a list broker
Internet accounts and warranty or product registrations
Higher cost per prospect reached, but yields higher quality prospects than mass media
Easy to measure results
The “junk-mail” problem

17. Catalog Marketing
Originally a way to reach rural and “off-the-beaten-path” prospects.
Nowadays most paper catalogs have gone digital (i.e. online)
Expected catalog sales in 2008: $200 billion.
Advantages and disadvantages
Paper vs. Online

18. Direct Response TV Marketing
Direct-Response Advertising:
TV spots that are 60 or 120 seconds long.
Infomercials:
A 30-minute or longer advertising program for a single product.
Home Shopping Channels:
Entire cable channels dedicated to selling multiple brands, items, and services.
Copyright 2007, Prentice-Hall Inc.

19. Copyright 2007, Prentice-Hall Inc.
Direct Response TV
HSN – The Home Shopping Network – is a direct response marketer’s dream.
Products shown on the channel can be ordered via a number or over the Internet from the HSN Web site.
Copyright 2007, Prentice-Hall Inc.

20. Kiosk Marketing
Ordering machines generally found in stores, airports, and other locations

21. Question du Jour
Why haven’t kiosk marketing and vending machines taken off in the United States?