What is personal selling and what advantages does it offer?

"Advertising acquaints potential customers with a product and thereby makes personal selling easier. Personal selling is a face-to-face sales presentation to a prospective customer. Sales jobs range from salesclerks at clothing stores to engineers with MBAs who design large, complex systems for manufacturers. About 6.5 million people are engaged in personal selling in the United States. Slightly over 45 percent of them are women. The number of people who earn a living from sales is huge compared, for instance, with the nearly 300,000 workers employed in the traditional advertising sector. Personal selling offers several advantages over other forms of promotion: Personal selling provides a detailed explanation or demonstration of the product. This capability is especially desirable for complex or new goods and services. The sales message can be varied according to the motivations and interests of each prospective customer. Moreover, when the prospect has questions or raises objections, the salesperson is there to provide explanations. In contrast, advertising and sales promotion can respond only to the objections the copywriter thinks are important to customers. Personal selling can be directed only to qualified prospects. Other forms of promotion include some unavoidable waste because many people in the audience are not prospective customers. Personal selling costs can be controlled by adjusting the size of the sales force, and resulting expenses, in one-person increments. In contrast, advertising and sales promotion must often be purchased in fairly large amounts. Perhaps the most important advantage is that personal selling is considerably more effective than other forms of promotion in obtaining a sale and gaining a satisfied customer."