CHAPTER 12
Making Contact: Different Products and Promotions SMALL
OPPORTUNITIES ARE OFTEN THE BEGINNING OF
GREAT ENTERPRISES.
— DEMOSTHENES
with consumers indirectly, but it isn’t the only way to reach them. Other promotional techniques—personal selling, industrial sales, sponsorships and direct marketing—put the marketeer in closer contact with buyers at all levels.
ADVERTISING COMMUNICATES
Personal Selling Personal selling occurs anytime a marketeer or a marketeer’s intermediary meets with a potential customer for the purpose of promoting a product. It takes place on either a face-to-face basis or via telephone lines (nowadays, even email is considered “personal”). Each customer is treated individually and essentially becomes their own separate market segment. This type of promotion is becoming increasingly prevalent in both international and domestic business as product information disseminates, choices widen, and affluence continues to rise, thus making for a more demanding consumer. SELECTION OF PERSONNEL
Personal selling requires the selection of very specialized personnel when working in the international market. Not only must they have the language and cultural skills mentioned earlier, but they must fully understand the business protocols and methods of the target market. Most importantly, they must be skilled negotiators. While many aspects of the plan will be conducted at some distance from the consumer, personal selling is as close as the marketeer and the consumer can get, and in no other aspect of marketing is proper personnel selection more important. Many international companies have chosen to recruit their sales forces inside of the targeted market, with supervision by management sent from headquarters or a regional office. Clearly these local personnel will have the language and cultural skills necessary, as well as much of the business protocol information. Often, the use of local personnel may be mandated by law. A marketeer will have to provide considerable training to the local sales force, in regard to both the product line and (in most cases) negotiation techniques suitable to the company’s image and financial requirements. Sometimes, a marketeer is permitted (or finds it easier for technical reasons) to bring sales personnel from their domestic market or another foreign subsidiary. This “expatriate” personnel should receive
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