Personal Selling

Personal selling occurs where an individual salesperson sells a product, service or solution to a client. Salespeople match the benefits of their offering to the specific needs of a client. Today, personal selling involves the development of longstanding client relationships. In comparison to other marketing communications tools such as advertising, personal selling tends to:

Use fewer resources, pricing is often negotiated.
Products tend to be fairly complex (e.g. financial services or new cars).
There is some contact between buyer and seller after the sale so that an ongoing relationship is built.
Client/prospects need specific information.
The purchase tends to involve large sums of money.
There are exceptions of course, but most personal selling takes place in this way. Personal selling involves a selling process that is summarised in the following Five Stage Personal Selling Process. The five stages are:

1. Prospecting.

2. Making first contact.

3. The sales call.

4. Objection handling.

5. Closing the sale.