Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Plate 7.3
Personal selling
Some customers like to make contact with their salesperson when taking a break from daily
activities. Photo purchased from © istockphoto.com/msherida.
implementing the marketing plan. And, the sales force may be the most important part of the
promotion strategy.
Selling
is the process by which people in one company help match the value of the
products, services, and information their company offers to the needs of targeted customers
(Downey et al. 2011). It is the process of helping people buy and the process of creating a
mutually benefi cial relationship between the fi rm and the customer. An important part
of sales is short term: generating results this week, this month, this quarter. But sales is
also about building long-term relationships with targeted customers And, the sales
force must act within the guidelines established by the company's marketing plan. In
addition, the selling activity will be supported by other elements in the fi rm's marketing
plan such as the product development effort, the pricing strategy, and other promotional
activities.
Over time, agribusiness fi rms have increasingly put marketing tools in the hands of
the agribusiness sales force. Here, the salesperson still has the basic responsibility to
make sales happen. But, the salesperson is asked to treat his or her sales area as a
mini-marketplace, and use the marketing tools developed in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 to assess
opportunities, and to develop and implement a sales plan that is very focused on the needs
of the specifi c territory served. This approach is called
fi eld marketing
, and represents
a move toward even closer integration of sales and marketing activities by agribusiness
fi rms.
