The Evolution of personal selling

Firms who rely on personal selling for their marketing success will survive and prosper to the extent they adjust their selling practices to fit the contingencies and market environment they face.

There are 5 stages in personal selling. Their characteristics are as follows

Stage and description	Customer needs are	Type of market	Nature and intensity of competition	Examples
1.Provider: Accepting and delivering to buyer.	Assumed to exist.	Sellers	None	Sales people drivers.
2.Persuader: Attempting to convince anyone to buy available offerings.	Created, awakened	Buyers	Undifferentiated, slight intensity	Tele marketer.
3.Prospector: Seeking out prospects with need for available offering as well as resources and authority to buy.	Considered but inferred	Segmented	Differentiated and growing	Car insurance salespeople calling on new car buyers.
4. Problem solver: Matching available offerings to solve customer stated problems.	Diagnosed with attention to customer input.	Participative	Responsive and counter active with increasing resources.	Communication systems salespeople for telephone company.
5.Procreator: Creating a unique offering to match customers’ needs as mutually specified involving any or all aspects of the sellers’ total marketing mix.	Mutually defined: matched with tailored offering	Co active	Focused: growing in breadth of market and service offerings	Materials handling equipment sales person who designs and sells a system to fit a buyers manufacturing facility.

Analysis and Critique

As a company’s sales force advances through these stages of evolution, it also seems clear that the terms “personal selling” and “salesperson” are more and more unrepresentative of what this function and these people really are. While “selling” might be broadly interpreted as encompassing the various tasks of the problem solver and the procreator, it is more likely that persons in this stage those stages are taking on enlarged responsibilities typically included under marketing and management. Advanced stages of personal selling are evolving into marketing and management positions with their mission to benefit each buyer while improving the firm’s profit.

When we look at the various stages in personal selling, it is sometimes seen that companies practice the same according to the type of situation that arises with prospective customers. Depending on the current mindset of the customers the stages are interlinked and intertwined in order to achieve the final goal: which is to bring about mutual benefit. Hence practicing concrete transition between stages will not work all the time. Each type of business requires a different kind mix between stages of personal selling.

This classification might help the firm reassess its selling strategy, thereby making it understand the circumstances under which each stage in the personal selling process is practiced. Personal selling is not the key to success for every company. Each company needs to first analyze the market and its competitors in order to make the management decision of whether personal selling is right for them or not.

The different stages can also be linked to B2C and B2B marketing. The last two stages involve more of the business transaction where the seller and the buyer sit together and chalk out their exact needs and tailor the product/service accordingly. Whereas in B2C it might involve more of a pull strategy where the consumer might jus need a small impetus to go on and purchase/use the product.