1. Personal Selling & Selling Skills
Chapter 2
Dr. Senem SÖNMEZ SELÇUK

2. A product that is well conceived and produced through the
Combination of the most modern technologies and the best of inputs cannot sell itself.
There is the need for the existence of such product to be made known to the target market.
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3. A good or service should respond favorably to the marketing mix which will result to the full performance of any good or service in the market. However, an important element of the marketing mix is promotion, otherwise known as marketing communication.
This is the element that brings the existence of product or service to the awareness of consumers or clients. It further educates potential and actual buyer of a product on the usage, benefits, availability, price and other features of the product.
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4. Personal Selling is ….
Personal presentation by the firms’ sales force for the purpose of making sale and building customer relationship. 
Personal selling consists of interpersonal interactions with customers and prospects to make sales and maintain customer relationships.
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5. Personal Selling is ….
Personal selling is a promotion via sales pitch by a sales representation to a prospect or by a retail assistant to a customer, guaranteeing exposure to self-selected member of a target market. 
Personal selling is oral communication with potential buyers of a product with the intention of making a sale.
The personal selling may focus initially on developing a relationship with the potential buyer, but will always ultimately end with an attempt to "close the sale".
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6. Personal selling is one of the oldest forms of promotion
Personal selling is one of the oldest forms of promotion. It involves the use of a sales force to support a push strategy (encouraging intermediaries to buy the product) or a pull strategy (where the role of the sales force may be limited to supporting retailers and providing after-sales service).

7. THEMSELVES!! Wants, Needs, Desires What Do Customers Care About?
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8. SOLUTIONS!! Not Products! What Do They Buy?
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9. Customer Orientated Selling ….
Customer orientated selling is ‘the degree to which salespeople practice the marketing concept by trying to help their customers make purchase decisions that will satisfy customer needs’.
The model for personal selling advocated here is that of a salesperson acting as a need identifier and problem-solver.
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10. Customer orientated selling can be characterised as:
The desire to help customers make satisfactory purchase decisions.
Helping customers assess their needs.
Offering products that will satisfy those needs.
Describing products accurately.
Avoiding deceptive or manipulative influence tactics.
Avoiding the use of high pressure sales techniques.
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11. In order to foster customer orientated selling, companies need to develop a corporate culture that views understanding customers and creating value for them as being central to their philosophy, and to use evaluation procedures that include measurement of the support given to customers, customer satisfaction with salesperson interactions, and the degree to which salespeople are perceived by customers to behave ethically.
In addition, companies should include ethics in sales training courses, and employ sales managers who are willing to promote and enforce ethical codes and policies.
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12. Research studies have shown that successful selling is associated with the following:
asking questions;
providing product information, making comparisons and offering evidence to support claims;
acknowledging the customer’s viewpoint;
agreeing with the customer’s perceptions;
supporting the customer;
releasing tension;
having a richer, more detailed knowledge of customers;
increased effort; and
confidence in one’s own ability.

13. Research has shown a number of key factors and these are;
When developing their personal selling skills, salespeople should also be aware of the characteristics desired of salespeople by buyers.
Research has shown a number of key factors and these are;
Expertise in their company’s products and the market
Good communication skills
Ability to solve problems
Ability to understand and satisfy the buyer’s needs
Thoroughness
Ability to help in ensuring the reliable and fast delivery of orders
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14. Buyers’ Likes and Dislikes about Salespeople
Knowledgeable
Unprepared
Empathy
Uninformed
Well-organized
Aggressive
Promptness
Undependability
Follow-through
Poor follow-through
Solutions
Presumptuousness (Going beyond what is right or proper)
Punctuality
Walk-ins
Hard-work
Compulsive talkers
Energetic
Problem-avoiders
Honesty
Lack of personal respect
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15. Personal Selling: Scope
Personal Selling involves selling through a person-to- person communications process.
The emphasis placed on personal selling varies from firm to firm depending on a variety of factors, including the nature of the product or service being marketed, size of the organization, and type of the industry.
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16. The Nature of Personal Selling
Wotruba has identified five distinct stages of personal selling evolution:
Provider Stage: Activities are limited to accepting orders for the suppliers available offering and conveying it to buyer.
Persuader Stage: Selling involves an attempt to persuade market members to buy the supplier’s offerings.
Prospector stage: Activities include seeking out selected buyers who are perceived to have a need for the offering as well as the resources and authority to buy it.
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17. Problem-solver stage: Selling involves obtaining the participation of buyers to identify their problems, which can be translated into needs, and then presenting a selection from the supplier’s offerings that corresponds with those needs and can solve those problems.
Procreator stage: Selling defines the buyer’s problems or needs and their solutions through active buyer-seller collaboration and then creates a market offering uniquely tailored to the customer.
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18. Types of Personal Selling
According to the classification of Derch Newton, the four types of personal selling are:
trade selling,
missionary selling
technical selling
new business selling
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19. Trade Selling
Trade Selling is selling products to wholesalers and retailers for resale purposes.
Trade selling involves the increase in the volume of the company’s sales by providing promotional assistance to the intermediaries.
Ex. Organic food, natural products, fertilizers, etc.
Trade Show - an exhibition or fair at which manufacturers display their products for the benefit of visiting wholesalers and retailers.

20. 2) Missionary Selling
A missionary type of sales job involves convincing someone who has never used a product to buy it.
The missionary involves educating someone about an idea or concept and convincing them to have faith in that concept.
Ex. Selling financial planning or life insurance and other financial products typifies the missionary sales job.
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21. 3) Technical Selling emphasizes the technical knowledge;
trying to highlight certain features of a product or service, in the hopes that it will connect with the buyer on that level.
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22. 4) New Business Selling
New business selling is used to obtain new accounts for the producer.
This involves the salesmen looking for new opportunities or new users for his company’s product in his territory.
Ex. Car shopping usually starts with online research. Consumers perform research on makes, models and car prices. They also read reviews written by model owners.
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23. Selling Approaches A company should have a standard sales method.
However, because customers make buying decisions differently, there will obviously be variations in the selling techniques successful salespeople use.
Research shows that there are four basic models of selling:
Transactional
Problem solving (consultative)
Affiliative
Enterprise selling
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24. Selling Approaches Finish sale as quickly and as easily as possible
Transactional
Finish sale as quickly and as easily as possible
Key to success is making as many calls as possible to as many people as possible
Affiliative
Based on the friendship between the salesperson and the individual buyer
Problem Solving or Consultative
Identify and solve a client’s problems
Also called needs-satisfaction selling or problem/solution selling
Enterprise
Business-to-business (B2B) concept
Based on not only person-to-person relationships but on company-to-company relationships

25. The Personal Selling Process

26. 1) Prospecting
Prospecting involves identifying potential customers for a particular product or service.
A prospect is a MAD buyer, someone with
the Money to spend,
the Authority to buy,
the Desire to buy it.

27. 2) Pre-Approach
During Pre-Approach, the salesperson tries to learn everything he can about the account.
Can take a significant amount of time.
Preperation signals that the salesperson is knowledgeable, competent, and cares about the customer.
During Pre-Approach, the salesperson tries to learn everything he can about the account. Perhaps using contact management software, the account’s history with the firm can be explored and the salesperson can tell what the customer needs. Or, using the internet, the salesperson can examine the account’s financial strength, future strategies, and the like. The salesperson might also try to find out what can be learned about the industry in which the account operates.

28. 3) Approach Approach: salesperson asks buyer to commit to a meeting
Opening statement must get buyer’s attention.
A good opening statement causes the buyer to focus on the salesperson.

29. 4) Needs identification
Needs identification: salesperson confirms prospect is MAD (Money, Authority, Desire)
Comprised of 3 elements;
Questioning 1
Identification 2
The needs-identification step is comprised of three important elements;
The first one is the use of questioning techniques in order to figure out the customer’s needs. The questioning process can take quite a while in a complex, custom sales situation.
The second element is the identification of the decisions process elements facing the customer (authority to purchase).
The third is the gaining pre-commitment. A pre-commitment is an agreement that all of the customer’s needs have been identified, a budget has been identified, and the decision process is known. In other words, the pre-commitment sets the “rules” for the sale and confirms that the buyer is MAD (has money, authority and desire to purchase).
Pre-commitment 3

32. 5) Presentation
Presentation: salesperson describes product and how it meets buyer’s needs
Feature
Evidence
One approach to presentations is to string together a series of FEBAs, or statements of Feature, Evidence, Benefit, and Agreement.
Using this approach, the salesperson begins with a characteristics of the product or feature. Then evidence is provided. The evidence is written or visual. Whenever possible, the salesperson should offer tangible evidence that is credible. The salesperson then ties that feature back to the need mentioned by the customer. Describing how a feature satisfies a need is a benefit. Finally the salesperson asks the customer if the product meets the need, gaining agreement.
Benefit
Agreement

33. 6) Handling Objections
Objections: reasons a buyer offers to not buy your product
Can occur at any time
Salesperson should find out root of concern and resolve it

34. 1. Listen and do not interrupt
Experienced salespeople know that the impression given to buyers by the salesperson who interrupts midstream is that the salesperson believes that:
• the objection is obviously wrong;
• it is trivial;
• it is not worth the salesperson’s time to let the buyer finish.
2. Agree and counter
This approach maintains the respect that the salesperson shows to the buyer. The salesperson first agrees that what the buyer is saying is sensible and reasonable, before then putting forward an alternative point of view. It therefore takes the edge off the objection and creates a climate of agreement rather than conflict.
3. The straight denial
This method has to be handled with a great deal of care since the danger is that it will result in exactly the kind of antagonism that the salesperson is wishing to avoid.
However, it can be used when the buyer is clearly seeking factual information.
4. Question the objection
Sometimes an objection is raised which is so general as to be difficult to counter. For example, a customer might say they do not like the appearance of the product, or
that the product is not good quality. In this situation the salesperson should question the nature of the objection in order to clarify the specific problem at hand. Sometimes this results in a major objection being reduced to one which can easily be dealt with.
5. Forestall the objection
With this method, the salesperson not only anticipates an objection and plans its counter, but actually raises the objection as part of their sales presentation. There are two advantages of doing this. First, the timing of the objection is controlled by the salesperson. Consequently, it can be planned so that it is raised at the most appropriate time for it to be dealt with effectively. Second, since it is raised by the salesperson, the buyer is not placed in a position where, having raised a problem, they feel that it must be defended.
The danger with using this method, however, is that the salesperson may highlight a problem that had not occurred to the buyer. It is most often used where a
salesperson is faced with the same objection being raised time after time. Perhaps buyers are continually raising the problem that the salesperson is working for one of the smallest companies in the industry. The salesperson may pre-empt the objection in the following manner: ‘My company is smaller than most in the industry which means that we respond more quickly to our customers’ needs and try that bit harder to make sure our customers are happy.’
6. Turn the objection into a trial close
A trial close is where a salesperson attempts to conclude the sale without prejudicing the chances of continuing the selling process with the buyer should they refuse to commit themselves. The ability of a salesperson to turn the objection into a trial close is dependent upon perfect timing and considerable judgement. Usually it will be attempted after the selling process is well under way and the salesperson judges that only one objection remains. Under these conditions they might say the following: ‘If I can satisfy you that the fuel consumption of this car is no greater than that of the Vauxhall Vectra, would you buy it?’
7. Hidden objections
Not all prospects state their objections. They may prefer to say nothing because to raise an objection may cause offence or prolong the sales interaction. Such people may
believe that staying on friendly terms with the salesperson and at the end of the interview stating that they will think over the proposal is the best tactic in a no-buy situation.
The correct salesperson’s response to hidden objections is to ask questions in an attempt to uncover their nature. If a salesperson believes that a buyer is unwilling to
reveal their true objections, they should ask such questions as the following:
• ‘Is there anything so far which you are unsure about?’
• ‘Is there anything on your mind?’
• ‘What would it take to convince you?’
Uncovering hidden objections is crucial to successful selling because to convince someone it is necessary to know what they need to be convinced of. However, with
uncommunicative buyers this may be difficult. As a last resort the salesperson may need to ‘second guess’ the reluctant buyer and suggest an issue that they believe is
causing the problem and ask a question such as: ‘I don’t think you’re totally convinced about the better performance of our product, are you?’

35. 7) Closing The Sale Close: when salesperson asks buyer for the sale
Good close
Reinforce decision to buy
Confirm implementation schedule
Thank the buyer
Ask for referral

36. 1. Simply ask for the order
The simplest technique involves asking directly for the order:
• ‘Shall I reserve you one?’
• ‘Would you like to buy it?’
• ‘Do you want it?’
The key to using this technique is to keep silent after you have asked for the order. The salesperson has asked a closed question implying a yes or no answer. To break the
silence effectively lets the buyer off the hook. The buyer will forget the first question and reply to the salesperson’s later comment.
2. Summarise and then ask for the order
This technique allows the salesperson to remind the buyer of the main points in the sales argument in a manner that implies that the moment for decision has come and
that buying is the natural extension of the proceedings.
3. The concession close
This involves keeping one concession in reserve to use as the final push towards agreement: ‘If you are willing to place an order now, I’m willing to offer an extra 2.5 per cent discount.’
4. The alternative close
This closing technique assumes that the buyer is willing to purchase but moves the decision to whether the colour should be red or blue, the delivery should be Tuesday or Friday, the payment in cash or credit, etc. In such circumstances the salesperson suggests two alternatives, the agreement to either thus closing the sale:
• ‘Would you like the red one or the blue one?’
• ‘Would you like it delivered on Tuesday or Friday?’
This technique has been used by salespeople for many years and consequently should be used with care, especially with professional buyers who are likely to have
experienced its use many times and know exactly what the salesperson is doing.
5. The objection close
This closing technique has been mentioned briefly earlier in this chapter. It involves the use of an objection as a stimulus to buy. The salesperson who is convinced that
the objection is the major stumbling block to the sale can gain commitment from the buyer by saying, ‘If I can convince you that this model is the most economical in its class, will you buy it?’ A positive response from the buyer and reference to an objective statistical comparison by the seller effectively seal the sale.
6. Action agreement
In some situations it is inappropriate to attempt to close the sale. For many industrial goods the sales cycle is long and a salesperson who attempts to close the sale at early
meetings may cause annoyance. In selling pharmaceutical products, for example, salespeople do not try to close a sale but instead attempt to achieve ‘action agreement’
whereby either the salesperson or doctor agree to do something before their next meeting. This technique has the effect of helping the doctor–salesperson relationship
to develop and continue.

37. 8) Implementation/Follow-Up
Follow-Up: After delivery, ensure that the customer has good experience with product
Training, service, policies and procedures

38. Selling Approach vs. Selling Process
Transactional
Prospecting
Affiliative
Problem Solving or Consultative
Closing
Presenting
Enterprise
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39. Selling Approach vs. Selling Process
The selling process is a constant cycle of prospecting, presenting, and closing.
Whether the model is transactional, consultative, affiliative, or enterprise, the basic process is similar.
In a transactional situation, little time is spent on needs identification. The emphasis in the selling process is on the presentation and a key to being successful is to make as many presentations as possible.
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40. Selling Approach vs. Selling Process
Affiliative selling, may not require a long needs identification process. Yet, there is a relation-building process that is ongoing, within which the selling process takes place. More emphasis is given to follow-up because it is during this step that the relationship with the customer is built.
Consultative selling emphasizes the needs- identification stage. The complexity of the buyer’s situation will make it necessary for the salesperson to spend a great deal of time, relatively speaking, on understanding the situation and needs.
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41. Selling Approach vs. Selling Process
With enterprise selling, the seller will engage in consultative, affiliative, and transactional selling at different times and with different products. The result is that the emphasis shifts, depending on the situation within the account.
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42. Personal Selling Skills
The skills involved in personal selling have also been explored in this part of the chapter.
The necessary skills are:
The opening.
Need and problem identification.
Presentation and demonstration.
Dealing with objections.
Negotiation.
Closing the sale.
The follow-up.
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43. Personal Selling Responsibilities Or Types of Sales Jobs
The responsibilities of a salesperson are categorized under different head by different authors.
One classification divides this responsibilities into two groups- Service Selling & Developmental Selling.
However, the most widely accepted is the one suggested by Anderson, which is as follows:
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44. Creative Selling/ Order Getting
Order Taking
Once the initial sale has taken place, the creative seller may be replaced by an order taker, whose role is much more casual.
Creative Selling/ Order Getting
Creative selling jobs may require the most skill and preparation. In addition to prospecting, the salesperson must assess the situation, determine the needs to be met, present the capabilities for satisfying these needs, and get an order.
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45. Order Supporting
They are not directly involved in selling products but acts as a support staff for the front-line sales personnel. They are of two types:
Missionary Salespeople
The missionary reps introduces new products, new promotions and/or new programs, with the actual order to be taken by the company’s order taker or by a distributor representing the company’s goods. e.g. Medical Sales Representatives
Technical Specialists
Technical Specialists assists the order-oriented salespeople in selling products by providing technical information about the product and technical assistance for installation, design of the product etc.

46. Advantages & Disadvantages of Personal Selling
Allowing for two-way interaction- In selling situations the message sender (e.g., salesperson) can adjust the message as they gain feedback from message receivers (e.g., customer). 
Tailoring of the message- It is Flexible . So if a customer does not understand the initial message (e.g., doesn’t fully understand how the product works) the salesperson can make adjustments to address questions or concerns. 
Lack of distraction
Involvement in the decision-process
Source of research information
Has an interactive nature of personal selling that makes it the most effective promotional method for building relationships with customers, particularly in the business-to-business market.
Personal selling is the most practical promotional option for reaching customers who are not easily reached through other methods.
Disdvantages;
Inconsistent messages
High cost - It is expensive maintaining this type of promotional effort due to the high per-contact cost involved.  Costs incurred in personal selling include high cost-per-action and training costs.
Poor reach- Can not reach mass audience
Potential ethical problems/Intruding nature of the method/ Conflict - The biggest disadvantage of selling is the degree to which this promotional method is misunderstood.  Most people have had some bad experiences with salespeople who they perceived were overly aggressive or even downright annoying.
Job turnover in sales is often much higher than other marketing positions
Labour intensive/Numerous calls or salestalking needed to generate sale