Establishing a budget

A sales-expense budget allocates expenditures among salespeople. products, customers, and geographic areas for a given period of time. A budget is usually based on a sales forecast and relates selling tasks to the achievement of sales goals. It should have some flexibility in the event the forecasted sales level is not reached or is exceeded.

These items should be covered in a sales-expense budget: projected sales, overhead (manager compensation, office costs) sales force compensation, sales expenses (travel, lodging, entertainment), sales meetings, selling aids, and sales management (employee selection and training) costs.

Developing a Personal Selling Plan

The development of a personal selling plan can be broken down into the seven steps shown in Figure 1. The steps are highlighted in the following subsections Personal selling objectives are demand or image oriented. Illustrations of each type of objective appear in Figure 2.

Scope and Importance of Sales Promotion

SaIes promotion involves the marketing activities, other than advertising, publicity, or personal selling, that stimulate consumer purchases and dealer efectiveness. Types of sales promotion described later in this section include samples, coupons, special sales,Contests, trading stamps, trade shows, and many additional activities in 1979

Characteristics of Personal Selling

Personal selling has a number of positive and negatise atributes, On the positive side, personal selling provides individual attention for each consumer and is able to pass along a lot of information. There is a dynamic, rather than passive, interaction between buyer and seller. This enables the firm to apply the concept of a buyer-seller dyad. which is a two- way flow of communication between both parties. This is not possible with advertising. Personal selling approaches can be flexible and adapted to the needs of specific consumers. For example. a real estate broker would use a different sales presentation for a couple looking for their first home than for a couple looking for their second home. The salesperson can use as much persuasion as necessary and balance it against the need for information. There is less waste with most forms of selling than with advertising. Personal selling centers on a more defined and concentrated target market. In addition. customers who walk int...

Selling Concept

Search This Blog