510 Part 6 Promotional Decisions
CHAPTER 17
PERSONAL SELLING AND SALES PROMOTION
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Chapter 17 is a continuation of the discussion on promotion, and it focuses on personal selling and sales
promotion. It explores personal selling strategies, giving special attention to the relationship-building
opportunities that a sales situation presents. Personal selling is the process of a seller’s one–to-one
Personal selling is a primary component of a firm’s promotional mix when one or more of several well–
defined factors are present: (1) customers are geographically concentrated; (2) individual orders account
for large amounts of revenue; (3) the firm markets goods and services that are expensive, are technically
complex, or require special handling; (4) trade-ins are involved; (5) products move through short
channels; or (6) the firm markets to relatively few potential customers. The chapter points out that
personal selling is much more costly and time-consuming than other types of promotion because of its
direct contact with customers. As valuable as it is, this makes personal selling the single largest
marketing expense in many firms.
This chapter goes on to explore sales promotion, which includes all those marketing activities other than
personal selling and advertising. It concludes with a discussion of publicity and how it enhances
consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness.
Changes in the 17th Edition
The chapter has been updated and revised in several ways:
• The Opening Vignette and Evolution of a Brand trace the success story of Salesforce.com, a
company which initially focused on providing cloud-computing services for sales operations and
information management. The company has recently introduced a service called Salesforce
• Solving an Ethical Controversy provides details on the debate about extended warranties.
Opinion seems to be divided between a section of manufacturers that feels that extended
warranties are not profitable as opposed to others who think it is a price that customers pay for
their “peace of mind.” For more details, read “When the Sale Doesn’t Benefit the Customer.”
Chapter 17 Personal Selling and Sales Promotion 511
• Career Readiness provides some information about how to tackle cold calling. Tips about how to
make a successful cold call are offered in the section “How to Make a Successful Cold Call.”
• Chapter Case 17.1 profiles the success of Shaquille O’Neal, former NBA veteran, who has
become a huge success on Twitter, making millions of dollars tweeting about the product brands
he prefers. With almost 9 million Twitter followers, Shaq has taken control of his own brand and
created quite a name as a successful pitchman. His new marketing business is discussed in
“Shaq Promotes His Personal Brand.”
LECTURE OUTLINE
Opening Vignette and Evolution of a Brand—”Salesforce.com Expands Marketing Cloud”–
features the story of a successful company that has introduced a new service that helps
companies understand their customers by acquiring insights from their online activities.
Chapter Objective 1: Describe the role of today’s salesperson.
Key Term: personal selling
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Table 17.1 Factors
Affecting the
Importance of
Personal Selling in
the Promotional
Mix. Considering
advertising.
1. What is personal selling?
ii. Individual orders account for large amounts of
revenue
iii. The firm markets goods and services that are
expensive, are technically complex, or require
special handling
2. The evolution of personal selling
a. Selling has been a standard business activity for thousands
of years
b. Selling is very different today from what it used to be during
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the earlier years
i. Today’s salespeople are highly trained problem-
solvers
c. Relationship marketing affects all aspects of a firm,
including personal selling
i. Marketers in both internal and external relationships
need to develop different sales skills
ii. Salespeople often work in teams
iii. Today’s emphasis is on long-lasting relationships
with buyers by providing quality customer service,
Assessment check questions
1.1. What is personal selling? Personal selling is the process of a seller’s
person-to-person promotional presentation to a buyer.
Chapter Objective 2: Describe the four sales channels.
Key Terms: over-the-counter selling, field selling, network marketing, telemarketing, outbound
telemarketing, inbound telemarketing, inside selling
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1. The four sales channels
a. Personal selling takes place through several
2. Over-the-counter selling
a. Over-the-counter selling, the most frequently used sales
channel, usually refers to selling in retail and some
Chapter 17 Personal Selling and Sales Promotion 513
wholesale locations
i. Most of these sales are direct–to-customer
ii. Business customers, however, are frequently served
3. Field selling
a. Field selling involves making sales calls on prospective and
existing customers at their businesses or homes
i. Some situations involve considerable creative
effort—the first task of the salesperson is to
convince customers that they need the product, and
the second is to persuade them that only one
particular brand will do, both of which require special
4. Telemarketing
a. Telemarketing is a channel in which the selling process is
conducted by phone
i. It serves two general purposes—sales and service
ii. It serves two general markets—business-to–
Figure 17.1
Alternative Sales
Channels for
Serving Customers.
products.
1.3 million people are employed in telemarketing
jobs
c. Inbound telemarketing involves a toll–free number that
customers can call to obtain information, make
reservations, and purchase goods or services
i. This form of selling provides maximum convenience
for customers who initiate the sales process
5. Inside selling
a. Inside selling is a combination of field selling techniques
applied through inbound and outbound telemarketing
channels with a strong customer orientation,
b. Insides sales reps perform two primary jobs:
i. They turn opportunities into actual sales
ii. They support technicians and purchasers with
current solutions
6. Integrating the various selling channels
a. Firms today are emphasizing blending and coordinating
alternative sales channels
b. Various levels of expertise and sales experience may be
Chapter 17 Personal Selling and Sales Promotion 515
used in different situations:
i. Existing customers whose business problems
require complex solutions are likely to be best
served by the traditional field sales force
Assessment check questions
2.1. What is over-the-counter selling? Over-the-counter selling describes
2.2. What is field selling? Field selling involves making sales calls on
2.3. Distinguish between outbound and inbound telemarketing. Outbound
telemarketing takes place when a salesperson phones customers; inbound
telemarketing takes place when customers call the firm.
Chapter Objective 3: Explain the three major trends in personal selling.
Key Terms: relationship selling, consultative selling, cross-selling, team selling, virtual sales
teams
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Table 17.2 What
Buyers Expect from
Salespeople. Turn
1. Trends in personal selling
a. Effective personal selling requires different strategies today
than in the past
i. In B2B settings, it is customary to sell to teams of
corporate representatives who participate in the
client firm’s decision-making process
b. To address these concerns, companies rely on three major
approaches to personal selling: relationship, consultative,
and team selling
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this list around and
create one that
addresses the
things buyers don’t
Wells Fargo
2. Relationship selling
a. Relationship selling is a technique for building mutually
beneficial relationships with a customer through regular
contacts over an extended period
3. Consultative selling
a. Consultative selling involves meeting customers and
listening to their needs, understanding and caring about
their problems, paying attention to details, and following
through after the sale
b. It works hand in hand with relationship selling to build
customer loyalty
c. Online companies use consultative selling models to create
long-term customers, particularly for complicated products
that require installation and technical service
d. Cross-selling
i. Cross-selling offers multiple products or services to
4. Team selling
a. Team selling, occurs when a salesperson joins with
specialists from other areas of a firm to complete the selling
process
i. Teams can be structured as formal and ongoing, or
can be created for a specific, short-term situation
ii. Customers often prefer the team approach, which
Assessment check questions
3.1. Identify the three major personal selling approaches. The three major
3.2. Distinguish between relationship selling and consultative selling.
Relationship selling is a technique for building a mutually beneficial
Chapter Objective 4: Discuss the three basic sales tasks.
Key Terms: order processing, creative selling, missionary selling, sales incentives
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1. Sales tasks
a. Today’s salesperson is more concerned with establishing
long-term buyer-seller relationships and helping customers
select the correct products than with simply selling
whatever is available
b. While all sales activities help the customer in some manner,
not all selling activities are alike. There are three basic
sales activities:
i. Order processing
2. Order processing
a. Order processing, mostly seen at the wholesale and retail
levels, involves identifying customer needs, pointing them
out to customers, and completing order
3. Creative selling
a. Creative selling involves situations in which analytical
decision making on the buyer’s part results in the need for
skillful proposals of solutions to the customer’s needs
product and get customers to notice it again
4. Missionary selling
a. Missionary selling is an indirect approach in which
specialized salespeople promote the firm’s goodwill by
helping customers with information or operational
assistance
Assessment check questions
4.1. What are the three major tasks performed by salespeople? The three
4.2. What are the three steps of order processing? The three steps of
order processing are identifying customer needs, pointing out the need to
the customer, and completing the order.
Chapter Objective 5: Outline the seven steps in the sales process.
Key Terms: prospecting, qualifying, approach, precall planning, presentation, cold call,
demonstration, handling objections, closing, follow-up
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1. The sales process
a. Personal selling encompasses the following sequence of
activities: prospecting and qualifying, approach,
presentation, demonstration, handling objections, closing,
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the Personal Selling
Process. Think
about the various
ways in which one
step leads to the
next. What are the
various decisions
that might take
place between the
steps?
c. Salespeople modify the steps in this process to match their
customers’ buying processes
2. Prospecting and qualifying
a. Prospecting is the process of identifying potential
customers
i. It can be difficult work involving hours of effort
ii. Leads can come from many sources—the Internet,
databases, trade show exhibits, previous customers,
acquaintances, suppliers, or other employees in the
firm
b. Qualifying is the process of determining whether or not a
prospect is really a potential customer
i. Not all prospects are qualified to make purchase
decisions
ii. Even if they like a firm’s products, they must have
the resources and authority to make a purchase
3. Approach
a. Once a qualified prospect has been identified and all
information is collected, the sales representative plans an
approach—the initial contact with the prospective customer
i. Information gathering makes the precall planning
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4. Presentation
a. In the presentation, the salesperson conveys the marketing
message to a prospective customer
i. The seller describes the product’s major features,
points out its strengths, and cites illustrative
successes
b. The presentation should be well organized, clear, concise,
and positive
i. The level of presentation depends on the type of
sales call—a major presentation requires in-depth
preparation and rehearsal
ii. Marketers are using visual sales support materials,
high-tech multimedia for presentations and
demonstrations
iii. But technology must be efficient to be effective,
meaning company websites need to have
5. Demonstration
a. During a demonstration, a buyer gets a chance to try the
product or see how it works
b. One important advantage of personal selling over
6. Handling objections
a. A vital part of selling is handling objections, which are
expressions of sales resistance by the prospect
i. Customers will often have legitimate concerns and
questions about the product they’re considering
ii. They may hesitate or stall in making a decision
7. Closing
a. The moment of truth in selling is closing, the point at which
the salesperson asks the prospect for an order
i. If the sales representative has made an effective
presentation based on applying the product to the
customer’s needs, the closing should be the natural
conclusion
8. Follow-up
a. The closing, or point at which the prospect accepts the
seller’s offer, is where most of the real work of selling
begins
b. Follow-up refers to the many postsale activities that
determine whether a person will become a repeat customer
c. It is not enough to close a sale and move on
i. In today’s increasingly competitive sales
environment, successful salespeople make sure that
that satisfaction results from all of a customer’s
dealings with the company
d. Follow-up involves many techniques, such as expensive
information packets, holiday greetings, or regular phone
calls
Assessment check questions
5.1. Identify the seven steps of the sales process. The seven steps of the
5.2. Why is follow-up important to the sales effort? Follow–up allows the
Chapter Objective 6: Identify the seven functions of a sales manager.
Key Terms: National accounts organization, global accounts team, span of control, expectancy
theory, compensation, commission, salary, sales quotas
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1. Managing the sales effort
a. The overall direction and control of the personal-selling
effort are in the hands of sales managers
b. Most sales management positions are organized on a
hierarchical basis, with a typical geographic sales structure:
i. A district or divisional sales manager might report to
a regional or zone manager
ii. The regional or zone manager in turn might report to
a national sales manager or vice president of sales
c. A sales manager’s job requires a unique blend of
administrative and sales skills
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Solving an Ethical
Controversy—
supervision, motivation, compensation, and evaluation and
control
2. Recruitment and selection
a. Recruiting and selecting successful salespeople are among
the manager’s greatest challenges
b. Advantages of sales as a career:
i. Opportunity for advancement
ii. Potential for high earnings
iii. Personal satisfaction
3. Training
a. To develop news sales recruits, managers are often
responsible for conducting effective training programs
b. These may include instructional videos or DVDs, lectures,
role-playing exercises, slides, films, and interactive
computer programs
4. Organization
a. Sales managers are responsible for the organization of the
field sales force
i. Organizational alignments may be based on
geography, product, type of customer, or some
combination
ii. Many firms use an organizational chart to
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Figure 17.3 Basic
Approaches to
Organizing the
Sales Force. What
are the various
ways of organizing
a sales force? How
might each type fit
certain industries or
graphically show the structure of their personnel
b. A product sales organization is likely to have specialized
sales forces for each major category of the firm’s products
c. Geographic specialization is used by firms that market
similar products through large territories
d. Customer-oriented organization uses different sales force
strategies for each major type of customer or industry
served
e. National accounts organization is a structure used by a
growing number of customer-oriented organizations,
designed to strengthen a firm’s relationship with large and
5. Supervision
a. A source of constant debate among sales managers
concerns the supervision of the sales force
6. Motivation
a. The sales manager’s responsibility for motivating the sales
force cannot be taken lightly
i. Because the sales process involves problem
solving, it often leads to mental pressures and
frustrations
ii. Efforts to motivate salespeople take the form of
information sharing, psychological encouragement,
or financial bonuses and incentives
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Depending on the
number of sales
staff hired, turnover
rate, expansion, and
type of industry or
product, what types
of firms might use
each plan?
who are happy at their jobs
b. Expectancy theory states that motivation depends on an
individual’s expectations of his or her ability to perform a
job, and how that performance relates to attaining a desired
reward
c. Sales managers can apply expectancy theory by taking the
five-step process:
i. Let each salesperson know in detail what is
expected in terms of selling goals, service
standards, and other areas of performance
7. Compensation
a. Sales compensation can be based on a commission plan, a
straight-salary plan, or a combination of the two
b. Bonuses are also a popular form of compensation
c. The popularity of team selling has led to reward programs
that recognize team performance
i. A commission is a payment tied directly to a
salesperson’s sales or profits that a salesperson
achieves—it is very popular, but may encourage
some to ignore nonselling activities or become too
aggressive
8. Evaluation and control
a. Perhaps the most difficult tasks required of sales managers
are evaluation and control
b. Sales managers are responsible for setting standards and
choosing the best methods for measuring sales
performance
i. Sales volume, profitability, and changes in market
share are the usual means of evaluating sales
effectiveness
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retention also come into play, for the following reasons:
i. The emphasis on building customer relationships
often results in long-term orientation periods with
d. When evaluating the performance of a salesperson, the
manager often follows a formal structure to answer three
basic questions:
i. Where does each salesperson’s performance rank
relative to the predetermined standards?
ii. What are the salesperson’s strong points?
iii. What are the salesperson’s weak points?
e. In completing the evaluation summary, the sales manager
should follow a set procedure so all employees are treated
equally:
i. Each aspect of sales performance for which a
standard exists should be measured separately
ii. Each salesperson should be judged on the basis of
actual sales performance rather than potential ability
Assessment check questions
6.1. What are the basic functions performed by a sales manager? The
6.3. What are the three main questions a sales manager must address as
part of a salesperson’s evaluation? The three main questions a sales
manager must address are the following: Where does each salesperson’s
performance rank relative to predetermined standards? What are the
salesperson’s strong points? What are the salesperson’s weak points?
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Chapter Objective 7: Explain the role of ethical behavior in personal selling.
Key Terms: None
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1. Ethical issues in sales
a. Promotional activities can raise ethical issues, and sales is
no exception
c. Today, long-term success requires a code of ethics, and
failure to live up to that code can have a devastating effect
d. It is sometimes thought that ethical problems are inevitable
due to the very nature of the sales function
e. Sales managers can encourage ethical behavior by
creating a corporate culture with certain characteristics:
f. Regardless of corporate culture, every salesperson is
responsible for his or her own behavior and relationships
with customers
g. Some questions they can ask themselves to clarify ethical
behavior and decision making:
i. Does the decision affect anyone other than myself
and the bottom line?
Assessment check questions
7.1. Why is it important for salespeople to maintain ethical behavior?
7.2. What are the characteristics of companies that foster corporate
cultures that encourage ethical behavior? Characteristics of corporations
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Chapter Objective 8: Describe the role of sales promotion in the promotional mix and the
different types of sales promotions.
Key Terms: Sales promotion, coupons, refunds, sampling, bonus packs, premiums, contests,
sweepstakes, specialty advertising, trade promotions, trade allowance, buying allowance, off–
1. Sales promotion
a. Sales promotion includes those marketing activities (other
than personal selling, advertising, and publicity) that
enhance consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness
b. Sales promotion techniques were originally intended as
short-term incentives aimed at producing an immediate
response—a purchase
i. Today, marketers recognize them as integral parts
of many marketing plans
ii. The focus has shifted toward long-term goals of
building brand equity and maintaining continuing
purchases
c. Both retailers and manufacturers use sales promotions to
offer consumers extra incentives to buy
i. They are likely to stress price advantages,
giveaways, or special offerings
may serve all members of a marketing channel
2. What sales promotions can, and cannot do
a. Sales promotions can:
i. encourage interest in both new and mature products
ii. help introduce new products
iii. encourage trial and repeat purchases
iv. increase usage rates