Advantages and Disadvantages of Personal Selling as a Marketing Strategy

Memorandum

To:        Ian m. Cook, Head of Colgate-Palmolive

From:    Parul Patel, Marketing Director Colgate Palmolive

Date:     04/14/2018

Subject:   Use of Personal Selling as the Marketing Campaign for Colgate Palmolive In India

Last week in the sales and marketing meeting, you stated that the company marketing department needs to come up with the best marketing campaign for our new product (Colgate combo) in China. In this memo, I would like to explain how we conducted an online Google survey and came up with the best method that will bring a fare and effective competition in the market while at the same time increase sales and be a success over other marketing campaigns. Economic policies changes and globalization have opened China to global competition and global market. Many multinational companies are thus making their way to start operations and offer their services in the country. The importance of using marketing campaigns has thus increased to help businesses achieve their set objectives (Anderson, 2010, p. 48). Use of marketing campaign plays a vital role in ensuring that any organization achieves its objectives. Use of effective and efficient marketing promotion is an important part of the production as it determines the size of the market of the product. For any purchase decision that a potential customer makes, there is a chance that the purchase was at one point influenced by effective and efficient marketing promotions (Johnston & Marshall, 2016, p. 72).

One of the elements of promotional marketing is personal selling. This method involves direct communication between potential customers and the company representative. It is face to face promotion and representation of the services and products being marketed. In the current digital world, services and products are promoted through electronic media and the use of the internet. Digital marketing has extended beyond the use of the internet. The use of MMS and SMS, use of search engine and social media marketing has changed the traditional ways of doing marketing campaigns. This has led to questioning of whether the use of personal selling could be effective in achieving its purpose. This lead to the marketing department to conduct a small questionnaire that had semantic differential questions.

The department with the help of the IT department worked together to create Google forms that were used to conduct an online survey. The link to the Google forms was sent to previously identified groups. The department had identified university students doing marketing in a university in China and some marketing agencies to fill the Google forms. The department got the response from 57 respondents. The responses were keenly analysed by the department, and they came up with the recommendations.

Recommendations for the Implementation of Personal Selling as the Marketing Campaign for Colgate Palmolive in China

The survey established the importance of personal selling in the marketing campaign. The results of the survey indicated that personal selling as a mode of marketing played a critical role in ensuring the success of the sale of a product, building customer relationships and maintaining loyal customers. Personal selling is a vital marketing strategy as it helps in creating the customer relationship  (Belch, et al., 2012). These findings are in line with the findings of the survey and thus confirming why personal selling should be the adopted marketing campaign to be used in China.

The organization to recruit a marketing agency in China

Employee a good number of Chinese who will act as the salespeople under the supervision of the marketing agency

Offer full marketing training to the salespeople hired

Pay for radio and TV advertisements

Provide salespeople with gifts

Buy enough cars that are labelled

Offer competitive salaries and allowances to salespeople

Take good care of the sales people welfare

Acquire and provide all required trading documents in Chinn

Personal selling can be defined as a method that salespeople use to ensure that potential customers make a purchase. The marketing strategy uses a technique that is tailored per the expectations. Personal selling as a marketing strategy of a product involves the salesperson taking the product to the consumer, answer all the question the customer may be having about the product and offer demonstration of how the product is used if need be. Personal selling could be the most effective marketing campaign for any business (Lamb, et al., 2015, p. 81).

Personal selling has continued to prove to be essential contributors to the success of many companies. Apart from ensuring that the firm’s product are bought, they help in communicating the image of the firm (Egan, 2015, p. 58). Most consumers tend to turn to sales people as the source of reliable information than any other marketing method. In comparison to other marketing techniques such as publicity, product promotion and advertisement (Marks, 2009, p. 182). Personal selling is unique in a way that while sales promotion and advertisement focuses on informing customers about the existence of a product, explaining about the products features and its availability, personal selling focuses on approaching the customer individually and solve all doubts they could be having about the product (Anderson, 2007, p. 172). Personal selling as a marketing strategy has its advantages and disadvantages.

Personal selling ensures less wasteful of communication whereby the salesperson ensures that they only meet good prospects (Egan, 2015, p. 105).

Conclusion

This marketing campaign facilitate the demonstration of the use of a product

The marketing strategy ensures two ways communication whereby the salesperson meets buyers’ objectives (Chia, 2017, p. 65).  The salesperson can answer and solve problems that the customer may be having on the product.

The salesperson always has a chance to push for order and make sure it is closed.

Apart from making sales, use of salespeople in an organization is helpful as they can be used to perform other non-selling tasks such as doing market research and solving customer complaints (Johnston & Marshall, 2016).

Personal selling ensures direct selling (Ingram, et al., 2012, p. 79).

The marketing strategy is expensive; the method involves hiring and educating salespeople, retaining them by offering a conducive working environment and satisfactory salaries. The technique also involves the use of means of transport that by the salespeople from one place to another and it is the responsibility of the company to cater for all that (Craig, et al., 2007).

The marketing strategy has limited reach; the method thus demands for extended time to enable the salespeople to create product awareness especially where another advertisement is not used.

Personal advertisement as a marketing campaign involves a loyalty of the salesperson to the company and the products being marketed. The process fortunes are thus tied to the loyalty of the salesperson and may fail if the salesperson develops a negative attitude towards the product or the firm

The marketing campaign involves less of impersonal selling and more of administrative problems (COPLEY, 2016, p. 72). The firm thus has to be aware of the challenges involved and be prepared to meet them such as organizing, coordinating, controlling, planning, motivating and directing.

For the marketing campaign to be a success in any market, the company have to meet some requirements failure to which the campaign will not bring the desired results. Head of marketing at Colgate Palmolive recommended personal selling as the marketing campaign to the head of the company to be used in the introduction of Colgate combo in the Chinese market. For the marketing campaign to be a success, the head of marketing gave some (Johnston & Marshall, 2016, p. 92) Recommendations that were to be met by the company.

The recruitment of a local marketing agency would save the company from the agony of doing market research. In most cases, local marketing agencies have the knowledge of the market about other similar products and the competitors. The agency will also help the company in recruiting the right salespeople.

Employee a good number of Chinese who will act as the sales people under the supervision of the marketing agency

The company with the help of the marketing agency is also required to hire local salespeople. These are people who have good knowledge of the language, culture, and topography. People tend to trust others if they can communicate in the same language and if they have the same complexity easily than they can trust foreigners. The use of local salespeople helps in creating a pool of loyal customers fast as compared to when the firm takes some of its professional salespeople in China. The knowledge of the topography will also help as the marketing campaign involves moving from area to the other. Salespeople taken from the company will take time to learn and thus waste some valuable time for marketing and thus a loss to the company.

For the sales team to have an impact on the market, they need to have good knowledge of the market, company, advertisement and the product they are selling and self-knowledge (Young & Mondy, 2007). However, the company should ensure that the training cost is within the spending requirements of the company as at points training salespeople tend to be the biggest drawback of the marketing campaign due to its high costs.

Knowledge of the products:

Knowledge of the Product being sold is the almost inevitable aspect of personal selling. Understanding the specific qualities of a product cover areas such as general information of the products history and origin product brand modifications, development has undertaken availability of competing products; Product dimensions such as colour, size, models, weight, physical makeup, quality control, manufacture, and prices. This knowledge increases salespersons’ confidence and thus convincing power which in turn increases sales.

Knowledge of the company:

To help build up lasting and stronger, shape personality and achieve success of the highest order, salespeople need to have the knowledge of the company they are working for. The salespeople need to know about the company history, origin current changes, reputation of the company, and physical aspect of the manufacturing plant and the financial aspects of the company.

Knowledge of customers

Knowing customers involves knowing what motivates customers, their thread-, instincts, and the type of customers, their likes, and dislikes. It involves psychological investigation that enables the salesperson to change the desire of a customer into demand. Salespeople with proper training understand that customer taste and demand varies from sex to sex, person to person, age to age, good knowledge about the customers help in identifying the right customers and thus helps in increasing sales.

Advertisements help in reducing resistance to a product. Customers who are introduced to a product through advertisements tend to have some desire to test the product. This makes it easy for the sales team and promotes sales. In doing the adverts, the company should use the marketing agencies to identify the radio and television stations which have a wide listening because of their popularity and to ensure that the information gets to a big number of prospective customers.

Use of gifts and offering discounts policies makes sales simpler to sales people. At times, the use of gifts and discounts is used to make customers makes appreciated and important to the company. Coupled with the convincing power of the sales team, the customers tend to be loyal to the product and the company. This helps in improving sales. Loyal customers tend to buy fifteen times more than other customers (Stevenson, 2012, p. 157).

Salespeople are a marketing method that involves a lot of movement as the sales team reaches to the potential customers. The company thus need to have enough vehicles to facilitate movement of salespeople. The vehicles should have posters and address system to be attractive to the crowds (Belch & Belch, 2018). Easy movement of salespeople enable them to reach to a large number of customers and thus boosting sales.

Offering good salaries and allowances and ensuring that the welfare of the salespeople is one of the effective’s ways of ensuring that salespeople remain loyal to the company. The effectiveness of using salespeople as a marketing campaign relies on the loyalty of the sale team.

For any business to be operational in any place, the business must ensure that it complies with the laid out operating rules and regulations by the authorities (Ries, et al., 2014, p. 91). It is thus important for Colgate-Palmolive to acquire all required trading documents in China and train the salespeople and ensure their welfare by the law. Failure to which the salespeople will not have a conducive environment to conduct the campaign.

Conclusion

In comparison to other marketing method, personal selling is unique as it involves the use of other campaigns such as product promotion and advertisement. For the company to achieve its sales objectives in China, the head of Colgate-Palmolive should ensure that the recommendations given are met and put in practice to make personal selling success in China.

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