Marketing Made Simple

5	Selling and management

5.1 The nature of selling

‘Personal selling’ involves face-to-face contact between sellers and buyers. Selling tasks differ, depending on the type of goods and services. Some salespeople are order-takers, while others employ sophisticated skills of prospecting, negotiating and demonstrating.

Personal selling is a primary communication tool in organisational (especially industrial) marketing, where up to 80% of the total marketing budget can be spent on salesforce costs. Personal selling is less important in many retail market situations (especially fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) markets). Selling to final customers increasingly uses non-personal communication such as packaging, advertising, merchandising and ...