Personal selling builds the relationship between sellers and customers, making it a unique form of selling. It is the only method of direct sales promotion. Although it is a flexible and efficient sales promotion method, it also incurs a huge cost.
Richard Bushirk states, “Personal selling involves contacting prospective buyers personally”.
Advantages of Personal Selling
The following points highlight the advantages of personal selling:
1) Allows Mutual Communication
Personal selling lets the seller communicate with the customers and helps them comprehend and resolve objections. It also allows the seller to instantaneously discuss the selling points with the customers. Mutual communication is the key advantage of personal selling.
2) Allows Modifying the Message
Direct communication allows the seller to modify the message for better understanding by the buyer. It helps the seller to understand the specific problems and needs of customers. Personal selling also helps the sales personnel decide the time to proceed to the next selling stage.
3) Less Distraction
Due to direct communication, the chances of distraction are reduced as the buyer pays more attention to the Information provided by the seller. It is less distracting even when more than one salesperson is involved in the presentation, or more than one buyer is involved. The process of personal selling allows lesser distraction than mass media.
4) Participation in Decision-Making
Since personal selling is a consultative and relationship-building approach, the seller gradually becomes a part of decision-making and plays an important role in solving buyers’ problems. In this way, the buyer depends upon the sales personnel to purchase products and services.
5) Provides Information
For an organization where the marketing and sales departments are well-structured, the sales force can play an active part in gathering updated Information about the competitors and their strategies, such as their products, pricing, promotion, etc., that will help the marketing department formulate competitive strategies. They also act as a medium to know the needs and wants of the customers to address them more efficiently.
Disadvantages of Personal Selling
The disadvantages of personal selling can understand with the help of the following points:
1) Inconsistent Messages
If the message to be communicated to the buyer is inconsistent, it can be disadvantageous. Usually, marketing personnel prepare the message content with a specific objective and sales personnel communicate the message to all the prospective customers. But, if the message is manipulated incorrectly, the sales personnel can lose the opportunity of selling the product.
2) Conflict between Sales and Marketing Staff
Sometimes, the sales and marketing staff do not cooperate. They do not understand each other’s work and do not realize that they are chasing the same goals. This conflict has many reasons, such as lack of proper communication, politics, etc. These conflicts hamper the process of personal selling. Therefore, it is one of the disadvantages of personal selling.
3) High Cost
Personal selling incurs a high cost to maintain. The costs which get extensively high in maintaining this promotional effort are as follows:
i) High Cost-Per-Action (CPA)
Cost-Per-Action measures the success of spending on promotion. The money spent on sales personnel is quite high in personal selling, as it involves one-to-one communication. Hence, personal selling is unreliable for products that do not generate much profit.
ii) High Training Cost
Personal selling requires the sales personnel to be highly skilled and knowledgeable. The companies that train their sales staff incur a huge cost. The training cost includes travelling costs, training equipment costs, salaries of trainees, etc.
4) Poor Reach
Personal selling is not able to reach the customer on a large scale as the other methods of promotion mix can do. If money is not a constraint, it also needs a lot of time to reach the customers. Also, the speed at which the target segment of customers is covered is very slow.
5) Unethical Practices
Sales managers cannot completely control the messages communicated by the salespersons. Hence, sales personnel modify the rules according to their convenience, which is not ethical or good for the organization. Salespeople can practice unethical activities because of monetary and other benefits, ultimately harming the organization’s image.