Thursday, March 4, 2010

Personal selling and Role of the Sales Force

According to Kotler, personal selling involves interpersonal interactions between salespeople and individual customers (Kotler 386). These interpersonal interactions can take form of: face to face, by phone, through video, web conference, and through an online messenger. Salespeople play an important role in representing a company and gaining customers trust. Through salespeople, companies are able to build long lasting and loyal relationships with their customers. In many cases, customers decide to shop at a specific store only because of the relationships that they have built with that store’s salespeople. According to Kotler, salespeople not only represent a company to customers, but they also represent customers to the company and help achieve the overall goal-customer satisfaction and company profit (Kotler 386). A good example of a company that uses salespeople to create a strong, loyal, and a long lasting relationship with their customers is Safeway Inc. Safeway strongly emphasizes the important of customer service and what role their employees play in the companies overall goal. When I worked as a sales clerk at Safeway, I had to represent Safeway to its customers. Part of my job requirements included: approaching potential customers, gathering information on customers’ needs, building relationships with customers, communicate company’s services, and finally making sales. Working with customers gave me a perfect position to gather information on what customers like and what they disliked. These gave me an opportunity to communicate with my department's manager and letting him know what customers though of different products and what Safeway can improve.

Olga Fedorovskaya
Section E

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