As a marketing strategy, personal selling is still considered highly effective and popular. This method is particularly effective in building positive relationships between a company and its customers.
Personal selling in marketing campaigns is not just a supplementary tool. Many business owners choose this method as their primary marketing strategy.
Let’s learn more about personal selling in this article. Make sure to read it all the way through!
What Is Personal Selling?
In essence, personal selling is a marketing technique that emphasizes personalization and human interaction in the sales process. This approach is carried out directly, without intermediaries, making the process feel natural and genuine.
Companies that use sales representatives to promote their products will have them present the products to customers. These representatives approach customers in a subtle and non-pushy manner.
Experts also believe that personal selling is a way for companies to interact directly and personally with their customers.
Through this interaction, the company aims to encourage potential customers to use its products.
Beyond merely offering products, the interaction between a company and its customers also aims to build a mutually beneficial relationship. This means the company will consistently strive to provide the advantages of its products as solutions to any problems customers may face.
Some people still believe that personal selling is the same as direct sales or direct marketing.
However, the two are actually different. The key difference is that personal selling focuses on creating a mutually beneficial relationship, whereas direct marketing does not.
Direct sales focus more on the company’s profit rather than on the primary goal of listening to customers, educating them, and providing solutions through the products.
Benefits of Personal Selling for Business
Before diving into examples of personal selling, first understand the benefits that can be gained by implementing this marketing strategy in your business:
1. Educate and Inform Customers
This marketing strategy uses a straightforward approach: directly reaching out to potential customers. As such, it is expected to both inform and educate customers through the products being offered.
By providing customers with information about the products, a company can reduce—or even eliminate—the gap between what is offered and the needs of potential customers.
This is because potential customers might otherwise receive inaccurate information about the product.
2. Maintain Customer Loyalty
In business, retaining existing customers can be more challenging than acquiring new ones—especially when it comes to turning them into loyal customers who make repeat purchases.
Personal selling, however, offers an approach that helps keep existing customers loyal to your business.
3. Gain New Information
Loyal customers are often happy to share information about new developments that you might need—such as details about competitors’ products or other market needs.
4. Easier to Obtain Customer Feedback
Direct interaction with potential customers also makes it easier for a company’s sales team to gather feedback from them.
Through their marketing representatives, companies can better understand how potential customers perceive their products—whether positively or otherwise.
This feedback can also relate to how the sales team approaches potential customers.
Using the information gathered, sales representatives can evaluate the approaches they use with customers, helping to improve sales in future opportunities.
Examples of Personal Selling
Examples of personal selling can actually be quite varied. For instance, direct promotion from door to door—commonly called door-to-door promotion—is a method where salespeople visit potential customers’ homes to offer products.
In addition, companies can promote their products through specific events, such as exhibitions. At these events, companies set up booths or stalls and offer products directly to the attendees.
In fact, many companies are willing to spend more to create brand awareness among potential customers.
For example, by holding workshops, seminars, or educational activities about the brand and products, potential customers can gain a more detailed understanding of the products.
One real-life example of a personal selling marketing strategy you can observe is the domestic cosmetics brand, Wardah.
Before becoming as popular as it is today, this brand engaged in direct sales by going door-to-door to potential customers, organizing small events on campuses or schools, and setting up booths in malls.
All sales personnel were assisted by beauty consultants who educated potential customers while introducing the products they offered.
To this day, Wardah remains one of the most popular local cosmetic brands.
Not only Wardah, but you can also see the success of personal selling with the brand Yakult, a beverage company that actively educates consumers on the importance of maintaining a healthy gut.
To this day, the brand continues to promote and sell its products door-to-door, in addition to advertising on television. In fact, each salesperson wears a uniform in the brand’s distinctive color.
This shows that personal selling remains a popular marketing strategy for businesses today. However, you also need to ensure that your business operates optimally—and one way to do this is by using Labamu.
This app offers features that simplify your business operations. For example, the POS Cashier feature makes transactions and record-keeping faster and easier.
There’s also the Manage Raw Materials feature, which simplifies the handling of ingredients, as well as a desktop version of the app that allows you to access Labamu anytime, anywhere.
Give Labamu a try today!
