It is the classic form of direct marketing mostly used by companies serving other companies. Business customers are looking for suppliers who can serve many locations quickly and work closely with the customer teams whereas supplier company seeks long-term supplier-customer relationship. Personal sales serve this need. It has three distinct features: (i) product and service sold through personal sales are usually critical to customers’ success or even its survival, (ii) price is usually expensive, and (iii) order quantity is big.
Personal sales are carried out by the company’s own representatives or by an external agent, whose productivity directly affects the company’s revenue. Hence, company designs measures such as sales rep selection, training (e.g., SPIN), supervision (e.g., activity management), motivation, and compensation to increase the productivity. Successful personal sales work with other functions (e.g., top management, technical, customer service, and office staff) to close a specific deal. Nonetheless, turnover rate of personal sales can be as high as 27%[1]. Below I use a real-life example of publisher sales rep serving NCTU to demonstrate the characteristics of personal sales.
| Characteristic of personal sales | HWA TAI PUBLISHING CO., LTD |
| 1. work closely with the customer teams
2. product and service sold through personal sales are usually critical to customers’ success 3. price is usually expensive |
1. designated sales team selling textbook and learning materials per faculty’s needs; assigns agents to each college who work closely with professors (who assign textbook) and assistants (who handle order for the class)
2. textbook is essential for teaching and learning; publisher has first-hand information about edition updates 3. an average textbook in English costs more than NT$600 and is used only 1 semester |
| 4. Serve many locations quickly
5. order quantity is big |
4. sales rep assigned to College of Management serves faculties located in Taipei and Hsinchu campuses
5. once a textbook is adopted by professor, bulk purchase from students follow suits and may repeat for semesters |
| 6. supplier company seeks long-term supplier-customer relationship | 6. sales rep knows professor in person, provides supplement material of a textbook (e.g., slide, exam problem sets, etc.) and offers free sample books to entice adoption
7. works with school-level administrator for electronic textbook and exam prep materials purchase |
[1] https://hbr.org/2017/07/how-to-predict-turnover-on-your-sales-team