What is Personal Selling? Distinguish between trade selling and missionary selling.
Personal selling may be defined as the personal process of assisting and/or persuading a prospective customer to buy a product or service. In other words, personal selling refers to a promotional tool involving oral presentation and face to face contact between the seller or his representative and the prospective customers undertaken with the objective of persuading the buyer to accept the seller’s offer.
Following are the features of personal selling:
- Personal selling is related to the establishment of sound and lasting relations between the salesperson and the customer.
- Personal selling is a creative art in the sense that it creates wants that never existed before by showing the prospective buyers how a particular product or service satisfies their demand.
- Personal selling is an activity of one human mind influencing another human mind.
- Personal selling involves not only in selling the products and services but also provides the knowledge, technical assistance and the counsel of the salesperson which satisfies the needs of the customers
Trade selling is a type of personal selling under which the primary function of a salesperson is to increase the volume of exports to foreign distributors. On the other hand missionary selling is a type of personal selling under which the primary function of the salesperson is to promote or educate or build goodwill for the product.
In case of trade selling the salesperson visits various buyers in the field to promote sales. He motivates the distributors to promote sales. In case of missionary selling, the salesperson calls on potential customers and provides details about the product.
