History of Personal Selling

Personal selling can be traced back to as far as ancient Greece.  The need for salespeople was enhanced by the Industrial Revolution and modern personal selling got its start during the first part of the twentieth century. 

The Industrial Revolution begins in the 18th century in Great Britain. This meant that the local economies where no longer self-sufficient and the need to reach new customers to buy the mass-produced products increased. The birth of the traveling salesperson begins. Salespeople are the primary way for providing paid personal communications to customers.

Personal selling is a communication process that helps salespeople fulfill customer’s needs. Which makes personal selling the most important part of marketing communication for most business. According to the textbook there is more money spent on personal selling than on any other form of marketing communication, weather it is advertising, sales promotion, publicity, or public relations.

According to one source I read there are seven steps to personal selling they are:

Prospecting
developing a list of potential buyers
preapproach
initial preapproach letter, telephone call, etc.
approach
initial face-to-face contact with prospect during which first impressions are formed
needs analysis
discovery and assessment of prospects needs
presentation
presentation/demonstration of how the product fills a need or solves a problem for the prospect
answering questions and overcoming objections
prospect provides feedback and salesperson attempts to further tailor the presentation for the prospect's needs
close
salesperson asks the prospect to buy
follow-up
delivery, customer service, referrals

http://www.avoncompany.com/about/selling.html

Comments

[nouman]

this history is very much beneficial for me in making a assighnment . good effort

[Juice Box]

I agree with the above comment. Would be nice for there to be more information though... I've searched for quite sometime and only come across this ^^^ on several sites.