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.