Diversity of Personal-selling Situations

Considerable diversity exists among personal-selling situations, and it is helpful to distinguish between service and develop- mental selling. Service selling aims to obtain sales from existing customers whose habits and patterns of thought are already conducive to such sales Developmental selling aims to convert prospects into customers. Developmental selling, in other words, seeks to create customers out of people who do not currently view the salesperson’s company favorably, and who likely are resistant to changing present sources of supply. Different sales positions require difference amounts and kinds of service and developmental selling. Mc Murry and Arnold classify positions on a spectrum ranging from the very simple to the highly complex. They categorize sales positions into three mutually exclusive groups each containing subgroups, a total of nine subgroups in all:

Group A (service Selling)

• Inside Order Taker –”waits on” customers; for example, the sales clerk behind the neckwear counter in a men’s store. These jobs are known as technical support staff, sales assistants, telemarketers, and telesales professionals.
• Delivery Salesperson – mainly engages in delivering the product; for example, persons delivering milk, bread, or fuel oil.
• Route or Merchandising Salesperson – operates as an order taker but works in the field – the soap or spice salesperson calling on retailers is typical.
• Missionary – aims only to build goodwill or to educate the actual or potential user, and is not expected to take an order; for example, the distiller’s “missionary” and the pharmaceutical company’s “detail” person.
• Technical Salesperson – emphasizes technical knowledge; for example the engineering salesperson, who is primarily a consultant to “client” companies.

Group B (developmental Selling)

• Creative Salesperson of Tangibles – for example, salespersons selling vacuum cleaners, automobiles, siding, and encyclopedia.
• Creative Salesperson of Intangibles – for example. Salespersons selling insurance, advertising services, and educational programs

The more developmental selling required in a particular sales job and the more complex it is, the harder it is to make sales. The amount and kind of developmental selling depends upon the natures of prospects and customers, on the one hand, and the nature of products, on the other hand. The easiest sales are self-service sales: customers know their needs, know the products capable of satisfying these needs, sell themselves, and go through the checkout line. The most difficult sales require developmental selling and creativity – where sometimes the sales must be made on something other than the product’s merit, or “multiple” sales are necessary to get the order, and where continual effort is required to keep the account.