Ch. 17 - Personal Selling and Sales Management

“Advertising offers the consumer a reason to buy; sales promotion offers an incentive to buy”.

            According to the book, personal selling has several advantages over other forms of promotion:

1.     Personal selling provides a detailed explanation or demonstration of the product.

2.     The sales message can be varied according to the motivations and interests of each prospective customer.

3.     Personal selling can be directed only to qualified prospects.

4.     Personal selling costs can be controlled by adjusting the size of the sales force in one-person increments.

5.     Personal selling is considerably more effective than other forms of promotion in obtaining a sale and gaining a satisfied customer.

         

           As we learned from the previous chapter, sales promotions are part of important strategies to increase sales. Unfortunately for the consumers, Apple doesn’t offer many promotions even though recently the company unlocked certain Apps for free. However, may be Apple is right to choose no focus on promotions because they can sale its products pretty well without using aggressive promotional campaigns. This is the difference between Apple’s market and others.

            Although Apple does not emphasis on promotions, the company very cares about personal selling. One of the reasons why Apple has a lot of loyal consumers is the company understanding the importance of relationship with its consumers and everything happens in its retail stores. The company's Apple Stores are home to many young and knowledgeable sales representatives who are trained thoroughly in both product information and customer service. They are salespersons, but they are unlike traditional salespersons. They don’t attempt to persuade the consumers to buy its products. The primary job for these sales representatives is to answer and explant the questions consumers asked. Walking into any Apple Store will reveal that employees are often young and most likely fall within the Generation Y or X age range and once the company releases of new products and upgrades the company produces every few months or so, these young sales representatives are able to assist its consumers to make purchasing decisions. Today, technology explosion has caused people to either accept the new changes or quickly fall behind. For those who fall behind, these sale representatives are able to help them catch up technology.