home Marketing Basics of Marketing - Kotler Philip

Basics of Marketing - Kotler Philip

Stimulation of sales - the use of a variety of incentive measures designed to accelerate and / or strengthen the market's response.

Chapter 16. Promotion of goods: personal sale and sales management

Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Tell about the role of the company's sales agent.

2. Describe the three options for the structural organization of the firm's sales office and talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each.

3. List and characterize the stages of the sale process.

4. Explain how firms evaluate the effectiveness of their sales agents.

The confidant of the firm "Merck and Co." promotes new medicines firms in Tennessee

Even in good health, Ray Henderson spends a lot of time in the doctors' waiting room. Henderson is a sales agent for Merck Sharp & Dome, a division of Merck & Co., Inc., which produces prescription drugs. His working area is the north-eastern part of Tennessee. Every day he travels around the cities and towns using his 22 years of experience to get past the secretaries into the doctors' private rooms and at any time they can give him, talk with the doctors about new medicines of his firm and leave them with samples of these Medicines, so that the doctors "tested" them by prescribing to their patients. In the pharmaceutical industry, salespeople like Henderson are still referred to as instructors-explanators, despite the fact that today there are many women among them. The name reflects the fact that these salespeople explain in detail to doctors the features of new medicines.

The firm, and indeed Henderson himself, closely watches that he always has detailed information about all the goods produced by the company. In the first year of work, the company's salespeople study biology and pharmacology for 12 weeks. Then they undergo an additional course, participating in rounds at the hospital with young doctors completing their last training practice. To ensure that their salespeople are constantly informed, the firm annually arranges four checks of their knowledge about the properties of the drugs of the current assortment. In addition to training through the company Henderson, he also studies a lot. Waiting in the waiting room gives him time to read the medical literature, which he always takes with him on the trip.

Recently, the use of competent sales agents to promote goods directly to doctors has become more important than ever for pharmaceutical companies. This area of ​​activity is experiencing a particularly favorable period. In the early 80's, pharmaceutical companies launched more new products on the market than any other period since the early 1960s. It is more and more difficult for busy doctors to keep themselves informed about the multitude of newly emerging drugs. Pharmaceutical firms worry that if they fail to properly introduce doctors to their new drugs, they will not prescribe them. And so in order to avoid any of its products from the field of view of doctors, Merck recently increased the number of its sales personnel by 55% - up to 1,400 people.

In addition to visiting doctors, Henderson also has other responsibilities. One of them is the organization of meetings of leading specialists in selected branches of medicine with local doctors practicing within the boundaries of the territory served by them. Such meetings give local doctors an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and information.

Many believe that in getting information about new medicines, doctors should not at all rely on salespeople. These critics believe that in an effort to increase sales, salespeople can provide doctors with tendentious, exceptionally positive information about the products of their firms. To bring down the wave of criticism, firms do not exaggerate the role of sales personnel, although in general, salespeople are famous for their honesty. People like Ray Henderson earned and maintain this reputation with hard work. "We must always tell the truth," Henderson says. "Try to deceive the doctor just once, and he'll never believe you again." And although physicians do not usually rely on salespeople as the only source of information about new drugs, any additional information that merchants can provide is often valuable to medical professionals. Sometimes it can be information about the goods of other firms. One of the doctors comments on the importance of the visits of traveling salespeople: "This is a great way to learn about the side effects of medicines from competitors. A traveling salesman will not fail to tell you about it. "

In addition, traveling salesmen give doctors the opportunity to communicate with pharmaceutical companies. If a drug from Merck gives an unforeseen side effect, doctors practicing in the northeastern part of the state of Tennessee can notify her about this through Henderson. That's why the vice-president of the firm "Merck" and calls its sales agents "a link between the researcher and the doctor" 1.

Robert Louis Stevenson once remarked that "everyone lives by selling something." Sellers are both in the state of commercial and in the state of non-profit organizations. Recruiters, attracting students to college, are representatives of the trading apparatus of this institution. The church attracts new flock with the help of parish committees. "US Agricultural Propaganda Service" sends on-site specialists in the dissemination of agricultural knowledge and the introduction of achievements that agitate farmers to use new agrotechnical techniques. Hospitals and museums use the services of fundraisers to maintain contacts with donors and raise funds.

People involved in this type of commercial activity are called in different ways: sales agents, contactors, sales consultants, sales engineers, field representatives, agents, service agents and marketing agents. Commerce is one of the oldest occupations in the world (see box 38).

There are many stereotypes about the sales agent. The word "traveling salesman" can cause associations with the image of the unfortunate Willie Lowman from Arthur Miller's play The Death of a Salesman, and with the image of an ever smoking cigar, slapping an interviewer on the shoulder and Harold Hill's joke-making jokes from Meredith Wilson's The Musician. Salespeople are usually portrayed by people as exclusively corporate, although in fact many of them do not like to support the company. They are criticized for imposing goods on people, although buyers often look for a meeting with a traveling salesman.

In the practice of today's economic activity, the term "sales agent" covers a wide range of specialists, who often have more differences than similarities. McMarrie developed the following classification of persons engaged in sales, by the specifics of their posts:

1. Positions in which the main job of the sales agent is to deliver the goods, for example milk, bread, fuel, fuel.

2. Positions on which the main job of a sales agent is to accept orders in the premises of his own firm, for example, a sales agent for selling items of a male toilet, standing behind the counter.

3. The positions on which the sales agent, remaining basically the receiver of orders in the premises of his own firm, deals visits to customers and on the ground, as do, say, the salespeople of meat processing enterprises, suppliers of soap and spices.

4. Positions on which the sales agent is not obliged and does not have the right to accept orders, and the purpose of his visits is the formation of favor or training of existing or potential customers. Examples are "dispatchers" of alcohol manufacturers and instructors of manufacturers of prescription drugs.

5. Positions on which the sales agent primarily requires technical knowledge. An example is the sales agent of a machine-building company, which is primarily a consultant of customer firms.

6. Posts requiring creative approach to the sale of tangible goods, such as vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, materials for exterior cladding of houses and encyclopedias.

7. Posts requiring creative approach to the sale of intangible goods, such as insurance, advertising services, training.

The above list covers positions that require minimum to maximum requirements for the creative side of commercial sales activities. In the first part of the list are listed the positions that require reporting and ordering, in the second - requiring efforts to identify potential buyers and to exert influence on them for the purpose of making a sale. We will focus on these creative forms of marketing.

The main decisions, with the need for which the firm encounters in the process of forming an effective trading apparatus and managing its activities, are presented in the scheme in Fig. 81, and their detailed description is given in the following sections of this chapter.

Fig. 81. The main decisions that need to be taken to organize the management of the company's sales office

Box 38. Milestones in the history of commerce and the art of selling

Commerce was already at the dawn of history. According to the description of Paul Hermann, the traveler of the Bronze Age traveled with a box in the form of "... a massive wooden box about 66 cm long with special grooves for various kinds of axes, blades, buttons and other goods." The first merchants and merchants were not highly respected. In ancient Rome, the name "seller" came from the word "crook", and god - the patron of merchants and merchants was considered Mercury, the god of wickedness and barter.

Over the centuries, the process of buying and selling has gained strength, concentrating in the trading cities. Potential buyers who were not able to get to the trading cities, the goods delivered to the house peddlers.

In the United States, the first traveling salesmen were Yankee peddlers (bag-traders) who delivered clothes, spices, household goods and various small items from their production centers on the East Coast to settlers of the western border areas in their shoulder bags. Merchants traded with the Indians, changing knives, beads and jewelry for fur. Many traders have acquired the reputation of cunning, unprincipled deceivers who are always ready to mix river sand into sugar, mix pepper with dust, coffee with chicory. Often they sold tinted sweet water as a "medicine", ensuring the disposal of all possible diseases.

At the beginning of the XIX century. Part of the peddlers got kibitkami and began to deliver and more heavy goods, such as furniture, watches, dishes, weapons and ammunition. Some peddlers settled in border settlements, opening there the first stores of mixed goods and factories.

Large retailers once or twice a year drove to the nearest big city to replenish their inventory. The matter ended with the fact that wholesalers and manufacturers began to hire a barker who sought out retailers and invited them to get acquainted with the product range of their employers. Striving to get ahead of competitors, barkers usually met all incoming trains and ships. Over time, callers began to visit clients directly in their places of business. Before 1860, there were fewer than a thousand salespeople in the country, many of whom were engaged in checking the creditworthiness of buyers and at the same time accepting orders for goods. By 1870, the traveling salesmen were already 7000, by 1880 - 28 thousand, and by 1900 - 93 thousand.

The methods of commerce and sales management that we use today were worked out by John Henry Patterson (1844 - 1922), universally considered the father of modern art of sale. Patterson was the owner of the National Cash Register (NKR). Once he asked his best salespeople to demonstrate to his colleagues the techniques they used. The approach recognized as the best was described in detail in the brochure "The seller's initial", which was handed to all the sales agents of the firm with the order to strictly adhere to all the provisions set forth in it. This brochure was the first textbook on the art of selling. In addition, Patterson secured sales areas for his traveling salesmen on the principles of exceptional service and stimulated their efforts, setting each sales rule. He often held trade meetings, which served both as training sessions and general friendly meetings. He sent his sales agents regular instructions on how to organize sales.

One of the young students of Patterson was Thomas J. Watson, who later became the founder of the IBM Corporation. Patterson pointed out to other firms the way of turning a trading device into an effective tool, ensuring the growth of sales and profits.