sales persons needs to possess in-depth knowledge about the productand company p olicies about the product.

two types of personal selling 1)sales persons will go the customer: this will happen mainly in B2B scenario. 2)customer goes to the sales person: this will happen in retailing. role of sales persons is important in both the scenarios. type of personal selling took up by the eurekha forbe is sales person will go to customer. products are vaccum cleaners, waterpurifications, air purifiers, home securities system each person of eureka forbes is called euro champ. he demonstrates, interacts, convinces,installs and provide service to steps of c ustomer.

personal selling: personal presentation by the firm's sales force for the purpos e of making sales and building customer relationship. sales person: an individual represnting a company to customer by performing one or more activities. the activities are like communicating, selling, servicing and building relationship and information gathering. roles performed by sales person: he links company and its customers he represents the company to the customer he represents the customer to the company. he coordinates within the company sales force management: the analysis, planning, implementation and control of sa les force activities. it includes designing sales force strategy, selecting, tra ining, compensating and evaluating the firm's sales people. steps in sales force management: designing sales force management and strategy recruting and selecting sales persons training salespeoples compensating salespeople supervising salespeople evaluating salespeople

sales force structure: dividing the responsibilities along several lines. the de cision is simple if it has only one product line to an industry with customers in many location. in this case company would have territorial sales force. product sales force structure: salespeople must know their products well.especi ally when the products are numerous, this forces company to adopt product sales force structure. ex. GE employs different sales forces within different product s and services for its company customer sales force structure: more companies are now using a customer sales f orce structure, in this company organises for customers or industry lines. separate sales force may be setup for different industries for serving current c ustomers and to find new customers. and some companies have specail sales to

handle the needs of the individual largecustomers. ex, sony has separate sales f orce to handle retailers like e-zone and croma. complex sales force structure: when company sells variety of products to many types of customers over a geographic area, company combines several types of sales forces sales people can be specialised by customer and territory, by pr oduct and territory etc. where no single structure is best then company adopts complex sales force. recently complex sales force has adopted by hewlett packard (HP). sales force size: many compnies use some form of workload approach to set sales force size. using this, a company first groups accoounts into different classes according to size, account status, or other factors related to it. then determine the number of sales persons needed to each function of accounts. and the company may think like this type A as 1000accounts and typeB has 800 ac counts and require 10calls a year then the saleperson workload (1000*10)+(800*100)=18000 an avg sales person can cover 900 calls a year then 20 sales person are needed. other sales force strategy and structure issues: outside and inside sales force: outside sales people travel to call on customer in the field. inside sales force conduct business from the office via telephone, the internet, or no. of visits from buyer. inside sales people provide support for the outside sales people to spend time o n other major accounts and finding new leads. for example technical sales support people provide technical information and ans wer the customer questions. sales assistants provide asminnistratie backup to the outside people. they call and cofirm appointments, and answer customer questions when outside people canno t reach in time. such combination help to server customers better. telemarketers and websellers do more than just their provide information. team selling: when products become more complex and customers are large in numbe r and more demand , a single person can't handle large no. of customers then com panies use team selling. sales team can solve problems, solutions etc that no individua l can do. such teams include experts from any area of selling- sales marketing, r&D and others.s recruiting and selecting people: the performance difference between avg sales pe rsons and top salesperson can subtancial. in sales force, the top 30% of sales p eople might bring in 60% of the sales. thus careful salesperson selection can increase the sales. when salesperson quits, the cost of lost sales -can be high. also a sales force with many new people is less productive. the best sales people possess four key talents: 1)intrinsic motivation 2)displined work style 3)the ability to close a sale 4)the ability to build the relationship. when recruiting, a company should analyse the sales job and its characteristics to identify the traits needed by a sales person in their industry. the hr department looks new people by getting names from current sales people, u

sing employment agencies, placing classified ads, searching web and other servic es. training sales people:most of the companies provide continuous companies objectives organisation porducts and measures to handle different types of customers and their habits selling purpose knowledge of competitors product and their details behavioural training compensating sales people: straight salary straight commission salary+ bonus salary+ commission. selling process: steps: prospecting and qualifying preapproach approach representing and demonstration handling of objecton closing follow up. prospecting and qualifying: the first step in selling process is prospecting- id entifying the potential customer. it can be done in various ways like knowing f rom prevoius customers, and from other refferrals like suppliers dealers non competi ng salespeople etc sales people need to know the qualify leads, prospects can be qualified by looki ng at their financial status, volume of businees, location and possibilities of growth preapproach: it begins with good reseach. the sales person needs to set call objectives, to t he qualify leads and gather info to sale quick sale. the approach may be a perso nal visit a phone call letter or e-mail. approach: the step involves sales person's appearence and foolow up remarks. the aim shoul d be to build goodwill from the relationnship. presentation & demonstration: not all the products need demontration. it defers from person to person, product to product, place to place. camparing the specification to the competitors spec ifications this need skills like communication convincing technical knowledge summarising handling objection: the step in the selling process in which the sales jperson seeks out, clarifies, overcomes customers objections to buying. sales person should be in +ve approac

h take objections as oppurtunities to provide more information. every person need training in the skils of handling objections. skills: pateince polite diplomatic calm and tempered persistent convincing closing: the step selling process in which the sales persons asks the customers for an or der. sales person should know the right moment to close the sales this may be by clos ing signals from the buyer, comments , questions etc., sales person can use one of several closing techniques. they ask for order, the sales persons may offer the buyer special reasons to close. follow up: in this step the sales person wants to ensure the customer satisfaction and repe at business. sales person should schedule on delivery time, purchase terms, and other matters . and make sure that there is proper installation, instruction and servicing.

sales promotion: short term incentives to encourage the purchase of sales of a p roduct or service. objectives: 1)build short term excitment and hopefully long term involvement 2)to induce buying by consumers, it is called consumer promotion 3)to induce stock buying in bulk, buying in advavnce-- trade promotion 4)to generate leads and lock customers to buy.-- business promotion. 5)to encourage own sales people in supporting specific products-- sales force pr omotion importance: 1)production managers find that sales promotion is the short method of increase in current sales 2)brands are becoming less differentiative therefore price is becoming more impo rtant. 3)the efficiency of advertising is decling because of clutters and increase in c ost. 4)customers are becoming more deal(discounts) oriented. 5)mega retailers also demanding more discounts for not only themselves but also to the customers. sales promotion tools: we have different tools for different objectives: consumer promotions: samples at free or at low cost, coupons, refunds, price p ack, premiums, advertising specialicsts,contexts, sweep slakes. event marketing: price off's , off list, allowance, free goods, push money. trade promotion: trade shows, industry conventions, etc,. business promotions: sales promotions tools used to generate business leads, sit

umalate purchase, reward customers and motivate salespeople.