Advantages and Disadvantages of Personal Selling | What is Personal Selling?, Introduction, Types, Pros and Cons

Advantages and disadvantages of personal selling: Today’s world is full of competition and it’s not easy for a seller to take advantage of potential buyers as buyers have great knowledge of the prevailing market conditions. Therefore a seller has to find out various techniques and methods to explore the potential buyers. This can be done by advertising their product. Sellers use various techniques to advertise their products, one of them is personal selling. Let us see what is personal selling.

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What is Personal Selling? Advantages and Disadvantages of Personal Selling 2022

Personal selling is a technique to sell a product through face-to-face advertising of the product. For this very purpose, a seller has to appoint various salesmen who do both advertisements and sell the product. In this way, a buyer can easily get the information required related to the product as well as it is reliable as many times a salesman will also show the demo to use the product. Personal selling has various steps involved in the process of selling. They are:

• Prospecting: The first step of personal selling is to find the potential customer for the product.
• Pre-approach: Before selling the product, a salesman must make initial contact with the customer by directly asking about his or her business.
• Approach: Then, a salesman directly approaches why it is necessary to buy the product.
• Presentation: The most important thing in the whole process of selling is how the salesman presents the product that would convince the buyer to buy the product.
• Handling objection: After the presentation by the salesman, the potential buyer may raise an objection or questions regarding the product. This depends on the talent of the salesman who has to handle the objection and answer the question of the person.
• Closing: After the objections and queries have been resolved, the next step is to close the deal by asking the buyer if they are interested in buying the product at the rate provided. At this stage, negotiations, contracts, etc., are made.
• Follow up: The last stage is to establish contact with the customer to find out whether they are satisfied with the product or not. As a happy customer becomes a brand advocate.

Types of Personal Selling

There are mainly three types of personal selling.

1. Order takers: They take orders from the customer for sale. They are like retailers who are approached by customers themselves for the product.
2. Order getters: They are the salesmen who bring new and prospective customers for the product sale. They persuade the client or customer to buy the product.
3. Order creator: They don’t close the deal but persuade the customer to promote the business offerings.

But it’s not an easy way of selling. It has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let us see what its various merits and demerits are.

• Advantages of Personal Selling
• Disadvantages of Personal Selling
• Comparison Table for Advantages and Disadvantages of Personal Selling
• FAQs on Pros And Cons of Personal Selling

Advantages of Personal Selling

Below are some advantages of personal selling.

1. Personalised selling experience: The seller uses the technique in which he allows trained personnel to take care of advertising and selling his product through face-to-face communication with the customer. Thus a customer has a personalized selling experience while buying the product that helps them in establishing a great bond with the product that instigates them to buy the product again and again.
2. Two-way communication: In personal selling, a salesman not only communicates with the customer, but the customer can also communicate by asking queries and objecting to the product description of the salesman. This is, therefore, a two-way communication process.
3. Personal attention to the customer: One personalized experience is provided to the customer; the customer feels more attracted and special to be given attention for the product. As it focuses on the demand of the customer, the salesman makes the customer feel as if the product is made for them and convinces them to buy the product.
4. Detail presentation: A salesman in his presentation gives full and minute details about the product. Thus the customer can rely more on the product as they can also counter questions if they have any doubts regarding the product. The product becomes more attractive after the proper demonstration of the salesmen. Thus customers would be willing to buy the product.
5. Quick feedback: As soon as getting the information about the product, a consumer nearly provides positive or negative feedback to the salesman. Positive feedback makes the product sell, while negative feedback makes no sale. This reduces the time-consuming process and makes the whole sales effective.
6. Helps in building trust: While selling any product, especially a high-value product, one must have a trust bond. This personal selling allows the chances of building trust more as compared to the other form of selling. As customers remain in regular touch with the salesman, he builds up a high level of relationship with the customer and also a happy customer leading to effective sales.

Disadvantages of Personal Selling

Below are some disadvantages of personal selling:

1. A limited number of people reachable at a time: The reach of people in personal selling is less as compared to the other form of selling. As one salesman handles an individual buyer at a time. It becomes critical to reaching maximum people at a time while mass media sellers’ use for selling the product is wider.
2. Training of salesmen is expensive and time-consuming: A salesman must be good at communication because these techniques are taught, and training is provided to the salesman for effective communication skills, but this training involves huge cost and time. Thus it’s an expensive and time-consuming process.
3. Expensive method: Training requires a huge amount of money, but the money spent on salesman visits and promotional activities by the salesman requires more funds and capital to be invested for better sales.
4. Labour intensive method: Personal selling involves a huge amount of labour for sales as this method involves communication between the salesman and the buyer. This is a personal interactive method in which labour plays a crucial role.
5. Salesforce has become beyond the control of the management: Salesmen approach the customer and are directly bond with the customer with their behaviour; thus, their activities cannot be monitored by the management of the product. Thus, sometimes, Salesforce, therefore, becomes beyond the control of the management.

Comparison Table for Advantages and Disadvantages of Personal Selling

FAQs on Pros And Cons of Personal Selling

Question 1.
What do you mean by selling?

Answer:
Selling is the process of selling goods to the customer to satisfaction of their needs and earning profit.

Question 2.
Why is personal selling an expensive method of selling?

Answer:
Personal selling is an expensive method as it includes the high expense of training the salesmen and also a time-consuming process. Secondly, personal selling involves home to home or one to one selling. This makes selling more time-taking as well as spending the amount on maintenance and refreshment of salesmen also makes it costly.

Question 3.
What are the seven steps of personal selling?

Answer:
The seven steps of personal selling are:

• Prospecting
• Pre-approach
• Approach
• Presentation
• Handling objection
• Closing
• Follow up