Core Concepts of Marketing by John Burnett - HTML preview

CHAPTER 8

COMMUNICATING TO MASS MARKETS

MARKETING CAPSULE

•

1. Advertising is the marketing communication technique that

4. Sales promotion

value to the product , and can be tar-

provides messages to mass audiences via a creative strat-

geted at consumers, salespeople, or di stributors.

egy and a media strategy.

5. Public relations maintains or enhances goodw ill with the

2. The organization for

may include an in-house

company's various publics.

advertising department or an external agency.

3. The creative strategy includes what you are going to

to the audience and the means for delivering the message.

Integrating personal

with other marketing communication elements may seri-

ously affect that salesperson 's job. Regis McKenna, international consultant, contends that

although marketing technology has made salespeople more effective, it may also decrease

the need for traditional salespeople who convince people to buy. As we move closer to "real-time" marketing, he believes customers and suppliers will be linked directly, so that cus-

tomers can design their own products, negotiate price with suppliers, and discuss delivery

and other miscellaneous concerns with producers rather than salespeople. McKenna sug-

gests that the main ro le of salespeople will no longer be to "close" the sale. Instead it will be to carry detailed design , quality, and reliability information, and to educate and train

clients.8

Don Schultz, Northwestern University professor of marketing and proponent of IMe,

supports this notion of the modem salesperson. "If yo u create long-term affi liations, then you don't sell. You form relationships that help people buy." He observes that because products have become more sophisticated, the businesses that buy are often smaller than those

that sell. "Today, I think the sales force is primarily focu sed on learning about the product OV ER 1 00

ALREAD Y

America's cotree.

helpe d

friends and communltres

for

100

w hy we

with

for Humanity 10

dIfference 1n the

lives of

wi th a

and

arrord able place to

ThrouQh our

Which

BUIld A

Home

00 home s in

With 100

100 weaks And

are not

there. At lhl s point.

600 of

em ployee s have

by

re cipient familie s

volunteers to

make thes e homes a reali1Y.

..

to

Ii

To date, we

100 hOme s With 3 more

10

to

year

the New York City

AD 8.6

This ad is typical of Institutional Public Relatio ns advertising.

SALES PROMOTION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

213

and not about the market. We're talking about flipping that around," he concludes.9 In short, effective

selling must focus on customer relationships.

To integrate personal selling with other marketing communication tools to forge strong

customer relationships, top management should lead the integration effort. Unless managers

understand what salespeople do, however, integration may not be successful. Before con-

sidering how to combine selling efforts with other marketing communication tools, we first

examine the job of personal selling.

The underlying

for personal selling is facilitating exchange. As suggested

by a personal selling expert, it is "the art of successfully persuading prospects or customers to buy products or services from which they can derive suitable benefits, thereby increasing their total satisfaction." A professional salesperson recognizes that the long-term success for the organization depends on consistently satisfying the needs of a significant segment

of its target market. This modem view of selling has been called "nonmanipulative sell-

ing," and the emphasis of this view is that selling should build mutual trust and respect. between buyer and seller. Benefit must come to both parties. This perspective is developed further

in the Integrated Marketing box that follows.

Types o f Selling

Considerable

exist in the various kinds of selling tasks. Early writers provided

two-way classification of selling jobs, consisting of service selling, which focuses on obtaining INTEGRATED MARKETING

•

SELLING INVOLVES EVERYTHING

Salespeople have been taught for years that the key to suc-

want a salesperson to call. The needed service or items is

cessful selling is finding out what people need and then doing

bought as soon as the need is recognized. In a proactive sale,

whatever it takes to fill that need. There are thousands of books

the business is running smoothly when the salesperson calls.

and articles based on this principle alone. Recently, however,

The salesperson, having been trained in a needs-driven indus-

many sales professionals are discovering a better way to sell.

try, asks the prospect what is missing. The buyer replies that

The real definition of selling has to do with finding out

nothing is needed. The salesperson insists that something must

what people or businesses do, where they do it, and why they

be wrong, and attempts to prove that there is a solution to the

do it that way, and then helping them to do it better.

"pain" the business is experiencing.

The

"need" doesn't appear in that definition at all,

There are two possible outcomes to this scenario. The first

because there is no need associated with today's selling. A

is that no sale is made. The second is that the salesperson does

successful salesperson first asks the prospect about the com-

uncover some deep-seated problem that can be fixed, and a

pany's goals before trying to fill an imagined need with the

sale is made. But this is an arduous process that pays off all

product or service being sold.

too infrequently.

Critics of tills approach say that determining what a busi-

The top competitor of salespeople today is the status quo.

ness does is the same as determining its needs.

all seman-

People continue to do what they do because it works. The

tics," they say. "The word 'do' is the same as the word 'need'."

salesperson is a messenger of change. He or she makes a sale

But it's not semantics. There is a major difference in the new

by helping someone improve the way they do business.

sales philosophy.

What does the concept of need-driven sales really mean?

Sources: Stephan Schiffman, "Here's the Real Definition of Seil-

For one thing, the word "need" implies that something is miss-

ing," The Marketing News , December 8, 1997, pp. 4-5 ; Diana

ing. For example, if a car has only three wheels, there is a

Ray, "Value-based Selling," Selling Power, September 1999, pp. .

need for a fourth. The driver of the car realizes that some-

30-33; Rochelle Garner, "The Ties That Bind," Sales & Marketing

thing is missing and stops at the nearest tire shop.

Management, October 1999, pp. 71-74.

A business generally has a full complement of tires, or

needed items. Even if a business needs something, it does not

214