Promotion and Personal Selling

Promotion is any communication between sellers and customers, potential customers or distribution channel members designed to impact attitudes or behaviours towards a product and can include:

• Advertising
• Publicity
• Sales promotion
• Personal selling

Personal selling involves making contact and talking directly to your customers. You may even take the product out to potential customers. Any of your employees who are in contact with customers must be made aware of the importance of selling to increase profits and provide a good customer experience. All staff need to gain a good knowledge of the products and have good social skills to be able to promote and sell.

Some examples of personal selling include:

• Selling directly to customers at a market.
• Waiters serving (and selling) directly to guests in a restaurant.
• Visiting companies that use / supply your product to customers for example a chef in a restaurant may use your salad dressing.

Sales promotion is where short term incentives are offered to encourage consumers to buy a product or service.

Examples of sales promotions include:

• Discounts and coupons
• Free trials
• Premium offers
• Bundling
• Refunds and rebates

The benefit of sales promotion is that it boosts sales and encourages customers who may not necessarily buy your product to try it. Unfortunately, sales promotions are usually have short term gains and customers may expect (and wait for) further promotions.

Activity

Consider (for your tactical marketing plan) what personal selling and sales promotions you would schedule into your plan.