Personal selling by sellers. The Marketing Aspect of Personal Selling

Selling their products uses various reminders, persuasion techniques, etc.

This influence got its name - promotion. One type of promotion is personal selling.

It is worth giving a clear definition this concept . Personal or personal selling is the technique of verbally promoting a product during a conversation with a potential buyer. The ultimate goal of this type, of course, is for the client to make a purchase. In addition, this technique can provide favorable conditions for further sales of a certain product, will increase the effectiveness of customer feedback.

Pros and cons

Personal selling is very effective marketing ploy. Compared to all other methods of promoting goods, they have certain characteristic features And

direct contact between client and seller;
interaction in the form of dialogues;
the possibility of acquiring long-term cooperation between contacts;
receiving effective feedback from clients;
effectiveness of technology;
the ability to obtain and accumulate marketing information about demand;
relatively high unit costs;

However, it is worth noting that the power of this strategy is complemented by its high cost, which is not always affordable for selling companies.

In addition to the cons this method There may also be a limitation regarding the number of clients that the seller can accept. The fact is that representatives are not robots, so time and physical capabilities allow them to come into contact with a fairly small number of buyers. It is also worth saying that the company is not always honest with its customers regarding the qualities and characteristics of certain products, which can sometimes raise doubts among those who contact us. this company people.

In certain cases, carrying out personal sales most effectively. Such cases include:

sales stages at which emphasis must be placed on consumer benefits;
sales processes large volumes supplied through direct channels;
concentration consumer composition in one territorial unit: district, region, etc.;
in situations involving the sale of expensive and difficult-to-manage equipment, requiring clarification from the seller, presentation and any services provided after the transaction is concluded;
new product sales cases who successfully completed the presentation;
cases with sales of services and goods, which require changes during the transaction depending on the preferences of buyers;

Personal Selling Process Example

An example of a personal selling process can be seen at the work of a company. . Let us assume that there is a certain company specializing in tourism services Oh. The starting point of the personal selling process, of course, will be establishing contact with the client. Depending on how much the seller can interest and attract the buyer, the client himself will be open to communication.

1.The seller must be guided by a sense of morality, inspiration. A huge role is played by the enthusiasm of the representative of the travel company, his dynamism and energy. The salesperson must treat the company he represents in exactly the same light in which he wants the client to see it. The success of personal selling depends to a large extent on certain aspects of the physical plane. So in our case, a person who sells serious tourism services must look appropriate. Any little thing can confuse the buyer: unkempt hair, nails, unkempt clothes, an incorrectly tied tie.

2. Second stage this process can be considered identifying needs client directly during personal selling. Since researching the desires of buyers goes all the way to concluding a deal, a travel agency agent must pay a lot of attention to this. At this stage it is important to consider several important aspects: behavior in a situation interpersonal relationships and listening skills.

3. Listening to customers is the most important thing. In this case, we are talking about the fact that the seller must not only be able to provide reasoned information, but also give the buyer the opportunity to speak out. When receiving a client, a travel agency representative should listen not passively (just pretending) and not selectively (separating only those points that interest the seller), but actively, paying attention to all the details and subtleties that the client will communicate. In a word, the prospects for concluding a deal depend on how competently the seller behaves when offering travel services.

4. The next stage is product presentation. Any representative must remember that the client will agree to conclude a transaction only if he receives sufficient information about this object. During the presentation, the seller needs to perform a number of tasks: attracting the client’s attention, awakening interest in a particular service and the desire to use the services of this particular travel agency. The seller’s qualities, such as the ability to speak and the ability to persuade, are also important here. A travel agency should not immediately provide any strong arguments; it is most logical to move from weak points to the strongest ones. In addition, the seller should under no circumstances put pressure on the client or try to somehow influence his choice.

5. Clients do not always make contact easily, objections on their part are very frequent, so the fourth stage of personal selling by a travel agency representative will be precisely the fight against objections. In order for the buyer to come to terms with his doubts, you can give him some arguments. In this case, you can compare this travel company with similar companies or agree to the client’s refutation and immediately give an argument that will give the buyer pause. There can be a lot of such methods.

6. It is natural that final goal- successful deal A. The buyer and seller do not always come to an agreement and immediately sign an agreement. In this case, you can also use a number of techniques. For this travel company a good option would be to provide the client with several options, for example, hotels, which end result will encourage him to choose one of them. Or you can refer to big discounts on some tours during this period. Thus, after weighing all the pros and cons, the client still agrees to sign the contract, so the deal can be considered successfully completed.

This is an example of the personal selling process in travel agency. In this case, a contact between a seller and one buyer is presented.

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Personal or individual selling is the verbal presentation of a product to one or more potential buyers for the purpose of making a sale. Personal selling is a method of communication in which a salesperson seeks to encourage and/or persuade potential buyers to purchase a firm's product/service.

The benefits of personal selling.

1. Availability direct contact between consumer and producer: sitting opposite each other or using telecommunications, such as telephone sales. Individual contact provides communicative elasticity: the seller observes or hears the reaction of a possible buyer to information and can change the information during its transmission depending on the reaction of the interlocutor.

2. Personal communication allows the seller to tailor information to the specific needs of the consumer.

3. The effect of the presentation can be assessed by the seller immediately due to the presence of direct and reliable feedback. In a situation of negative reaction, the seller may change the information.

Disadvantages of personal selling.

1. High price contact. A visit to a consumer includes the costs of selecting a seller, his training, his salary, his transportation and travel expenses. Reaching large audiences through personal selling can be prohibitively expensive.

2. Small audience size. The high price of personal sales does not allow reaching a large number of buyers.

3. Different sellers may not provide the same information. This makes it difficult to provide consistent and consistent information to all customers.

Personal selling can include any personal contact of representatives of enterprises that contribute to one degree or another to the growth of sales of goods. A sales agent acts on behalf of the enterprise and performs one or more functions: searching for possible clients; establishing communication; sales; service organization; information search and resource allocation. At the stages of creating preference, persuasion and invitation to action, personal selling is the most effective means. Personal selling promotes the formation of various connections, from formal (seller - buyer) to friendly ones. For a professional salesperson, the client's needs are the subject of personal attention, from which long-term professional contacts arise.

Personal selling forces the consumer to respond to communication in a certain way, even with a polite refusal. Personal selling is the most expensive means of promotion. Therefore, it is necessary to find out exactly in which areas this type of promotion will bring maximum commercial effect.

Used in personal selling marketing communications: trade presentations, fairs and sales exhibitions, special promotional events.

The personal selling process is driven by the need to:

1) negotiate (here you mainly need to have the gift of persuasion, present arguments to existing objections and skillfully use eloquence);

2) establish a connection (to do this, you need to know how to accept a client, start communication, approach the issue correctly, sensitively monitor the development of the relationship and complete the sale just at the moment when it is necessary);

3) satisfy the need (this means understanding the need or finding the client’s motivating reasons for purchasing a tourism product, i.e., finding the main aspects of the client’s interest, listening carefully to complaints or criticism).

The personal selling process consists of a sequence of steps, each of which must be studied flawlessly by the sales agent.

Rice. 17. Steps in the Personal Selling Process

All these steps are focused mainly on winning new consumers and receiving orders from them.

Stage 1 The first step of the sales process is accepting the client and establishing contact with him. The beginning and maintenance of friendly relationships depends on the client’s sociability and sincerity, on the one hand, and the seller’s ability to attract his interest, on the other. Travel agency employees need to follow ethics and approach the conversation with enthusiasm. Inspiration, initiative, activity are those components without which it is impossible to create an atmosphere most favorable for establishing connections with clients. Selling is often made with faith in victory and self-confidence. A tourism product sales manager must experience certain feelings towards himself, the organization, his business, which should help him appear in front of other people a confident person.

For Personal Selling Success great value has not only psychological factor, but also appearance employee - to look appropriate, be clean and neatly dressed. People are very susceptible to such little things as a sloppily tied tie, bad manicure, etc.

There are several ways to help you start communicating with a client. The first is to immediately address the problem that the client is fully occupied with. The second method is based on immediately stunning the client with one striking phrase or one colorful image. The third method is based on recognizing and accepting a person as an individual (every person needs recognition). There is mainly primary recognition, that is, the client must be recognized as a completely independent participant in personal selling. The fourth method is a subtype of the first and differs in its approach to problems. If in the first option the client’s preferences are recognized and revealed during the conversation, then in the fourth option the seller specifically brings the conversation to the problems that bother the client. The manager studies and considers these problems during the conversation. The fifth way is to immediately begin discussing the main issue, making a proposal that will not fail to interest the client.

Stage 2 Identifying the client's needs is an important point in personal selling. People acquire benefits, not product properties, therefore, the main element of personal selling is not the product and its characteristics, but the benefit for the client. It is important not only to know about the client's needs in order to provide evidence, but it is equally important to be able to listen to the person in order to determine the client's needs.

Stage 3. Product introduction is the most important step in personal selling. How a particular travel service is described to a large extent depends on its image, the client’s interest, and therefore the desire to purchase it. When presenting a product, the manager must solve several problems: attract the client’s attention, interest in purchasing the service and push him to take the necessary actions.

Stage 4 Overcoming possible client objections can be psychological or logical in nature. Psychological disagreement is determined by the characteristics of the client as an individual. Overcoming it requires the manager to have knowledge about the characteristics of customer behavior and experience in this area. The reason may be the lack of real benefits of the existing product or its incorrect presentation. To overcome such disagreements, the manager needs to know both his product and the products of competitors, their strengths and weaknesses. This approach makes it possible to foresee in advance, firstly, prepare counterarguments, and secondly, find a way out of any difficult situation even with unforeseen arguments from the interlocutor.

Stage 5 Making a sale is related to the execution of the transaction.

Stage 6. The logical end of the personal selling process is further contact with the client, which makes it possible to find out the requirements and wishes of the clients, which are the starting point for improvement. individual services and development of the product strategy of the tourism enterprise.

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14.2. Personal Selling Process

The sales process is a sequence of steps, each of which must be studied flawlessly by the sales agent. All these steps are focused mainly on winning new consumers and receiving orders from them. The personal selling process is quite difficult, as it is necessary:

1) negotiate (here you mainly need to have the gift of persuasion, present arguments to existing objections and skillfully use eloquence);

The sales process consists of the following stages:

1) receiving the client and starting communication with him;

2) determining the client's needs;

3) a story about the product;

4) overcoming possible disagreement;

5) conducting a transaction;

6) further contact with the client.

The first step of the sales process is accepting the client and starting to communicate with him. The beginning and/or maintenance of friendly relationships depends on the client’s sociability and sincerity, on the one hand, and the seller’s ability to attract his interest, on the other. As a result, the company's employees need to follow ethics and morale in their work. These are the basic qualities that they undoubtedly need.

Inspiration, initiative, activity are those components without which it is impossible to create an atmosphere most favorable for establishing connections with clients. Selling is often made with faith in victory and self-confidence. A tourism product sales manager must experience certain feelings towards himself, the organization, and his business, which should help him look like a confident person in front of other people. For the success of personal selling, not only the psychological factor, but also the appearance of the employee is of great importance. He must look appropriate, be clean and neatly dressed. This should not be forgotten, since all people are very susceptible to such little things as a sloppily tied tie, bad manicure, etc.

Determining client needs – important point during a personal sale. The road to the sale itself goes through a careful study of the client's needs. But it is necessary to take into account that people acquire benefits, not the properties of the product. Therefore, the main element of personal selling should not be the product and its characteristics, but the benefit for the client. To achieve this, you need to analyze the client's needs, and to carry out the analysis, the seller must have certain psychological qualities.

An essential element of identifying client needs is listening. It is important not only to know about the needs of the client in order to provide evidence, but it is equally important to be able to listen to the person.

Product story– the most important stage in the process of personal selling. How a particular travel service is described to a large extent depends on its image, the client’s interest, and therefore the desire to purchase it. When presenting a product, the manager must solve several problems: attract the client’s attention, interest in purchasing the service and push him to take the necessary actions.

Client disagreement can be of a psychological and logical order. Psychological disagreement is determined by the characteristics of the client as an individual. Overcoming it requires the manager to have knowledge about the characteristics of customer behavior and experience in this area. The reason for the appearance of logical disagreement may be due to the lack of real benefits of the existing product and its incorrect presentation. To overcome such disagreements, the manager needs to have an excellent knowledge of both the product he represents and similar products of competitors, and precisely know their strengths and weaknesses. This approach makes it possible to foresee in advance, firstly, the client’s potential disagreement and prepare convincing arguments, and secondly, to find a way out of any difficult situation even with unforeseen arguments from the interlocutor.

The logical end of the personal selling process is further contact with the client. The travel agency always wants the consumer to be satisfied with the service, as this ensures further interaction. The best possible customers are today's satisfied consumers. Further contact with the client makes it possible to find out the requirements and wishes of clients, which are the starting point for improving individual services and developing the product strategy of the travel agency.

Workshop

Situation

A person has booked a room at the Marriott Hotel, Surfers Paradise, England. During this period, the new hotel offered special preferential conditions for those who lived nearby in order to introduce them to its services and thereby create the conditions for positive reviews from local residents. The hotel message stated that check-in is after 2pm. But when the person arrived at 2:30 pm, the check-in employee said that there were no available rooms yet and asked him to wait a little. An hour later the employee announced that the room was ready. The guest came into the room, opened the door and saw several people in the room. Then he returned to the check-in desk and announced this to the employee. The puzzled employee checked the information on the computer and made several phone calls. As a result, he learned that the sales person was obliged to show the room to potential guests, but did not bother to exclude it from the list of ordered rooms. Normally this would not have been a problem, but on this day there were many people wanting to check into the hotel and waiting for their rooms. After cleaning, the rooms were made available to the waiting guests. The check-in desk clerk explained to the client what had happened and asked him to return to the room. Later, he was given champagne and fruit with an apology from the manager.

Questions

1. Analyze this situation from a personal selling perspective. Draw conclusions.

2. What are the features of the personal selling process?

3. How can you improve the effectiveness of presenting a tourism product?

Exercises

1. You recently became a manager in a travel company. I came to your office potential client. You begin to tell him about the quality of your tours, compare your company’s offers with those of your competitors. But the person tells you that he is not interested in quality and is going to leave dissatisfied. Why did this potential client react so negatively to your words? What can be done in this situation to correct the situation before the person leaves?

2. The Canary Islands are called the “Islands of Eternal Spring,” emphasizing one of the main advantages of the resort. Indeed, in Tenerife, Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura, located five hundred kilometers north of the equator and a hundred kilometers from Morocco, there are no seasons familiar to us: it is warm in winter and summer, autumn and spring. clear weather and this, of course, attracts tourists from all over the world here, to the Canaries. Tourist infrastructure began to develop here in the early 90s of the 20th century using the most advanced technologies. Therefore, holidays in the Canary Islands surpass all well-known resorts in mainland Spain in terms of quality, service and comfort. For those who are concerned about the ecology of recreation, it is undoubtedly important that about 80% of the beaches in the Canaries are marked with the Blue Flag of the European Union - highest rating level of service and cleanliness.

When constructing most hotels in the Canaries, the latest trends were taken into account hotel business. The hotels are distinguished by large territories and park areas, well-equipped spacious rooms. As for accommodation, you can stay anywhere: all hotels on the Canary Islands are comfortable, with convenient access to the sea. The choice of accommodation is varied: from aparthotels with kitchenettes without meals to all-inclusive hotels.

The excursions offered to tourists in the Canary Islands are exciting and unusual. For example, on the yacht “Mustcat” from the port of Colon, on the southern coast of Tenerife, you can go on a boat trip. Visitors to the Teide Nature Reserve have a unique opportunity to see solidified lava fields and fantastic rock formations. And, of course, the famous carnival in Tenerife is of great interest to tourists all over the world.

There is practically no rain in the Canaries, and the air temperature is almost always 25–29 degrees. The climate and weather in the Canary Islands are so favorable that the swimming season lasts almost all year round. (Information about the tour of a large travel company).

Think about what exactly is missing from this message as information in the personal selling process? How can this information be supplemented?

Homework

Your company has decided to implement a rather unusual tourism product. You have no competitors in this market segment. But the product is also quite specific. Prepare a presentation of this tourist offer. Try to cover all aspects involved in personal selling.

This question worries both novice sellers and people with some experience in sales. The site has a lot of information on this topic, but since readers constantly ask the question of increasing personal effectiveness in sales, I decided to devote a separate article to this issue.

It is simply not realistic to analyze the techniques used in sales in one article, and there is no point, since information on sales techniques can be found in this article. I decided to give a set of recommendations, by adhering to which, the seller will be able to increase the rate of personal sales.

Studying the product

For successful sales you just need knowledge of the product. No matter what anyone tells you, the seller’s competence in knowing the company’s product line plays an important role in sales. Let me give you an example from own experience: I needed to purchase spare parts for a car. I decided to buy from an online store because... there the price was much lower. I called several companies and talked with sellers, I was interested in the compatibility of spare parts with engines, because... The spare part is very specific. All sellers unanimously said that they were not sure of compatibility, but if something happened, I could make a return within 2 weeks. I was not happy with this option; I wanted to buy the part I needed the first time. And imagine my surprise when, in desperation, I dialed the Nth number and the seller gave an intelligible answer to what I needed and helped me decide on the manufacturer, after which I placed an order. Now think about how many clients like me, who do not understand the product well and need competent advice, and how many sales the company as a whole loses due to the incompetence of salespeople. Having studied the product, I strongly recommend that you study the competitor’s line and how to write down a cheat sheet and memorize it over time competitive advantages sold product.

Choosing a sales technique

At first, we will need to decide on the technique that we will use in sales. Here it is necessary to delve into more detail this question, so depending on the sales techniques differ. Since most readers are interested in active sales, the recommendations given here relate mainly to active sales, and for them I would recommend the technique or. Having chosen a technique, create several sales scenarios and try to find out which one is more effective in practice. If for some reason the scripts are not working, you can use “ ” to analyze at which stage the failure occurs and take measures to eliminate it.

Developing a manner of behavior

No sales scenario will bring us success if we do not develop such qualities as: Confidence, faith in our words, goodwill and punctuality. I have already said more than once that the seller’s mood is transmitted to the buyer, and if the seller is negative, the buyer will feel it and is unlikely to want to conclude a deal with such a manager. Also, do not forget that the script and the script are nothing more than a hint; I do not recommend reading from the script or memorizing it by heart, since the memorized text is very noticeable to buyers and frankly hurts the ears. As an example, do you personally like actors who pronounce a memorized text without intonation, and constantly get confused? Likewise, the buyer is unlikely to like such a conversation, so we use the script as a hint and put the speech correctly, it should radiate goodwill and confidence.

Train yourself to keep your promises. If you promised the client to call you back in five minutes, be sure to call back! If the information for the client is not ready, call back anyway and advise him on the time frame within which you will provide the information. Very often, deals fall through due to the irresponsibility of salespeople who promise to call back or find out something for the client, but things don’t go beyond those promises.

Self-motivation

To achieve results you must constantly motivate yourself. I recommend setting yourself a goal: buying a car, summer cottage etc. While using the criteria. Then calculate how much money you need to earn per day, month, year to do this. Start from how many trades you need to close every day to get the required reward. The main thing to remember here is that some are looking for reasons, and others are looking for opportunities!

Analyzing our actions

Keep a diary and analyze all your actions for the day. Think about what you did well, what could have been done better and easier, what didn’t work and why. Also, analyze your mistakes and why they were made. Do not forget that in any situation life teaches us a lesson, and what you learn from it depends entirely on you.

Self-study

You shouldn’t sit and wait for the company to send you to training or additional training. You must constantly engage in self-development, read and study useful information, do not be afraid and do not hesitate to apply the acquired skills in practice. Now there is a lot of information about everything related to sales, don’t be lazy to study it. I recommend bookmarking the website and subscribing to the newsletter via social media. This way you won't miss anything important in the world of sales.

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