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It is a flexible tool: Personal selling Involves individual and personal communication as marred to the mass and Impersonal communication of advertising and sales promotion. Therefore, personal selling is most flexible in operation. A salesman can 1 OFF customers can observe the customer’s reaction to a particular sales approach and thus make necessary adjustments right on the spot. Face-to-face contact with customers is the most effective means of communication and persuasion. It involves minimum wasted effort: In personal selling, a salesman can select the target market and concentrate on the prospective customers.
He need not communicate with the people who are not the real prospects. Therefore, personal selling involves minimum wastage of effort. It results in actual sale : Advertising and sales promotion techniques can only attract attention and arouse desire. By themselves they cannot create actual sale. Personal selling in most cases leads to actual sale. A salesman can find prospective buyers, demonstrate the product, explain its operation, and convince customers to buy it, install it at the customer’s place and provide after-sale service.
No other method of promotion can perform all these functions. Therefore, personal ailing does the entire Job of selling. Personal Selling is a complete promotional technique of keeping customers satisfied. It provides feedback: Personal selling involves two-way flow of communication between the buyer and the seller. It is a useful method of understanding the needs and behavior customers. It provides knowledge about the tastes, habits and attitudes of the prospective customers.
It complements advertising : In most situations, there is a need for explaining the quality uses and price of the product. Salesmen can persuade the prospective customers to buy a product. Advertising attracts customers but their doubts and questions about the product are answered by salesmen. In this way personal selling supports advertising. Salesmen educational the consumers about new products and about new uses of existing products. It educates customers : Salesmanship is not simply a tool of convincing people to buy certain products.
It assists customers in satisfying their wants. A salesman provides: information, education and guidance to customers. He handles their complaints and assists them in getting value for their money. He can clear their doubts on the spot. It assists the society: Salesmen help to increase aggregate sales and production in the country thereby increasing employment opportunities. They help to maintain equilibrium between demand and supply. Despite the above advantages, personal selling suffers from several disadvantages.
Firstly personal selling is the costliest method of promotion. Secondly, it can cover only limited number customers at a time. Thirdly, it is not very effective for creating consumer awareness about a product or service. Fourthly, many consumers are suspicious of personal selling at the retail level and they criticize lessen for lack of honesty, poor knowledge, strong pressure, etc. Lastly, it is difficult to recruit, train and motivate competent salesperson. 5. FORMS OF SELLING Selling and buying are almost a day to day activity done by customers and merchants.
The selling operations come in different place and in different forms since merchants find many ways Just to deliver their products to the consumers. Selling different products to the consumers can be done in many ways. Merchants can sell their products by selling the items in stores, by selling the items in the arrest stalls, through house to house selling, or selling the items in traveling stores also called as stores on wheels. Stores are usually located in either commercial or services centers and other general merchandising stores.
These stores are commonly found strategically in the places and communities where the people usually shops for different goods. Selling products in this retail through these stores is beneficial to the consumers since they don’t have to go directly to the manufacturers or to the wholesalers to purchase the items. Different items are readily available in same laces and time making it easier for the consumers to do shopping. Market stalls are those lines of stalls that usually sell varied products such as different dry goods, raw foods such as fishes as well as meat and poultry products.
It is usually divide into two; the wet market and the dry market. The wet market is where we purchase the meats, fishes, vegetable and other wet products. On the other hand, the dry market is where we buy or purchase different dry goods such as the clothing, schools supplies, and other dry products. The house to house selling is done directly in the houses of efferent customers. The merchant usually hand carried their products if they are portable or the items are placed in carts.
Oftentimes, these merchants Just bring their modules where the pictures or images of their products are into. Another selling activity is done through the way of traveling stores or sometimes called as stores caravan. Store caravans are almost the same with the house to house selling strategy but only differ from some manners. One of the differences of this kind as compared to the house to house selling is that it carries a wide variety of researched and it usually sells only in the streets on a particular community rather than going into a house to house selling operation.