Marketing

• occurs when a company representative interacts directly with a customer or perspective customer to communicate about a good or service
• crucial relationships with clients
• the more complex, technical, and intangible the product, the more heavily firms rely on personal selling

• Push strategy: goal is to push the product through the cannel of distribution so that it is available to customers
• If decision maker has higher status within the organization
• If purchase is a new task for the customer
• If the customer is very large
• If the product is expensive
• If product is a custom good or personalized service
• trade-in products
• Negotiation is required

• Transactional Selling: Putting on the Hard Sell
• Relationship Selling: Building Long Term Customers

• A form of personal selling that focuses on making an immediate sale with little or no attempt to develop a relationship with the customer
• high pressure, hard sell approach
• makes us feel manipulated, resentful, and it diminishes our satisfaction and loyalty

• A form of personal selling that involves securing, developing, and maintaining a long term relationships with profitable customers
• mutual win-win relationship wot the customer
• converting an interested prospect into someone who is convinced that the good or service holds value to her

Efforts to gain a direct response from individual consumers (a request for further information, and/or a visit to a store or other place of business for purchase of a product

• Catalogs: Collection of products offered for sale and described in book form, usually consisting of product descriptions and photos
• Direct mail: is a brochure or pamphlet offering a specific product or service at one point in time. Many Americans feel overwhelmed with direct-mail offers
• and don’t open their “junk mail.”

• Telemarketing: Direct marketing conducted over the telephone. It is more profitable for business than consumer markets
• Do Not Call Registry

• Direct-response advertising: Allows consumer to respond by immediately contacting the provider with questions or an order
• Direct-response TV (DRTV): short commercials, 30-minute-plus infomercials, and home shopping networks
• Infomercials: are half-hour or hour commercials that resemble a talk show but in actuality are intended to sell something.