Personal selling

Personal selling is also known as face-to-face selling in which one person who is the salesman
tries to convince the customer in buying a product. It is a promotional method by which the
salesperson uses his or her skills and abilities in an attempt to make a sale.

Set personal-selling and sales objectives

Sales Objectives:

At-least, four sales objectives can be set for the entire selling organisation. These are sales
volume market share, sales profitability, and selling expenses.

1. Sales volume objectives

Sales volume as sales objective implies determining sales goals in terms of units of sale. Say, it
can be annual expected sale of 100 million dollar of 10, 00, 000 units.

The total volume may be further reduced to market segmentation, product groups, and
customers. The sales volume goals are decided on the basis of sales-forecasts arrived at by the
marketing research team of Uniliver.

2. Market share objectives

Market share as an objective stands for the company’s share in the total sales, sales volume of
the industry which a company desires to attain. This objective is also expressible in terms of
sales and units. Normally, it is expressed as a percentage of the total industry sales. Like sales
volume, it may be further reduced to market segments, product groups and customers.

3. Sales profitability objectives

Sales profitability refers to the relationship between the sales and the gross profit. As an
objective it portrays the target contribution towards earning gross profit. In other words, it is the
ratio of gross profit to sales.

It is expressed as a percentage rather than an absolute ratio. Percentage indicator is much more
meaningful as it makes results comparable. The sales we mean here, ‘net sales’ and not the
‘gross sales.’

4. Expense objective

Expenses incurred determine the company’s earning before tax and the sales volume. The
expenses are expressed as a percentage of sales. In other words, it is the ratio of operating
expenses to sales. Prima facie, it appears that by setting the percentage limits, we are curbing the
expenses. In fact, it does not man so.
Selling Objectives:

Salesmen welcome fair selling objectives as the indicators of what the top management expects
from them in the performance of their tasks, in association with the sales supervisors and branch
managers.

These selling objectives can be: sales volume, profit, expense and activity:

1. Sale volume objective

The most common and frequently set sales objective is to set in terms of sales volume. It is
otherwise called as sales quota. This objective expresses in money or units the volume which the
management expects should be sold by a salesman within a given time in his territory. It is worth
emphasizing that salesman’s ability to develop sales volume is only a partial measure of his
effectiveness.

These sales volumes objectives can be set for individual, individual salesman, branch, district, or
sales region, time periods, types of customers and for the sales call or the order.

2. Profit objectives

The company’s management body establishes profit objectives for each salesman, each product,
or line, each branch, district, or region, customer type, rupee sales, sales territory, call or each
order. It could be for a definite period of time. It is the cost accounting department that has a
major role to play in having this segmented target fixing. Profit objective, here, is the percentage
of gross profit to be earned on the sales.

3. Expenses objectives

Direct selling expenses decide the sales and the profit as noted earlier. Therefore, direct sales
expenses objectives are established for each salesman as a percentage of total sales, per
customer, per call, and per order of a product.

The direct selling expenses include salesman’s remuneration, travel, lodging, entertainment and
other incidental expenses incurred in selling. This expense objective is increasingly used as a
standard measure of performance.

4. Activity objectives

Uniliver has set specific objectives for salesman’s activities such as number of calls, calls of
interviews, number of demonstrations, number of new prospects, number of displays arranged,
and the number of store sales for a time period.
Research conducted in this line has clearly shown that there is definite relationship between
effective selling and the number of interviews, demonstrations, prospects, promotions, calls
made and so on.

These sales activity objectives may be established for number of calls per salesman, per day,
customers per salesman, orders per customer per year, orders per salesman per day or a week or
a month, presentations per day, prospects secured daily or weekly or monthly, hours spent in
sales office and field, displays installed, surveys completed, collections made, meetings held
with dealers and so on. These objectives can be combined for better results for Uniliver because;
there would be cross-verification of the facts and the happening of the events.

Develop promotional strategy

There are a number of forms of promotional strastegy and a set of information tasks for
communicators.

Internal PR

These include corporate newsletters, crisis management plans, corporate intelligence reports, and
other forms of communication that are intended for the internal audience of employees and
officers of Uniliver.

News releases

News releases about Uniliver are sent to media outlets by PR specialists who want to generate
interest for their client. The functons may be:

 as a simple announcement story

 as an advance story
 as a follow-up after an event
 in response to a trend, current event or unfolding crisis

Broadcast (video) news releases

A video news release (VNR) is simply a news release in the form of a broadcast news story. The
video and voice-over are designed to look like a piece that we would see on any television news
program. B-roll footage, or video images sent to the media, is closely related to a VNR. The
difference is that b-roll does not include a narrated voice-over, and is not edited as a ready-to-go
news package. Reporters use b-roll footage to enhance their own stories.

Media kits
The media kits consist of a fact sheet about the client or event, biographic sketches of major
people involved, a straight news story, news-column material, a news feature, a brochure,
photographs, and for those kits delivered digitally, audio and video segments. Often, media
professionals package these materials in a folder or other unique format that is professionally
designed and printed, or post the materials on a website specifically created for the distribution
of the media kit content. Public relations organizations create media kits with the intent of
providing story ideas for news professionals, as well as to generate interest and attention for the
client. Magazine publishers create media kits to attract advertisers by highlighting the size and
quality of their audiences, the effectiveness of their editorial content and the prices for placing an
ad.

Backgrounder or briefing session

PR specialists provide in-depth information about an issue or event for reporters in

backgrounders or briefing sessions. The PR people offer handouts (information sheets or reports)
and the principal news source about the issue or event makes a presentation. Unlike news
conferences, there is little give and take between reporters and the moderator of these sessions.
They are used to explain a policy or situation rather than to announce something. The handouts
prepared for these sessions are sometimes quite extensive, requiring solid information
preparation among the PR specialists working on the handouts. The information tasks for the PR
specialists include the need to anticipate the types of questions journalists will ask and the depth
of follow-up material they need to provide.

Media tour

Like a briefing or background session, the purpose of a media tour is to provide in-depth
information to reporters. However, the format of the meetings that take place on the media tour is
often highly interactive. The nature of the information provided as part of a media tour is
generally slightly less timely than what would be discussed as part of a news backgrounder or
briefing. A media tour might be arranged so that reporters can “demo” a new high-tech product,
while a company representative walks them through the features. PR specialists’ information
tasks include knowing what will be most interesting to the journalists on the tour and what can
and can’t be shared as part of the event.

Special events

PR specialists may plan special events for clients who want media attention for a cause or issue.
There may be a jump-rope-a-thon for cancer research, or a grain that the company may sponsor a
food lift for famine victims. These events must be planned to have news value, and the
information that is generated to announce and entice coverage by news professionals must have
all of the same characteristics that we have already mentioned. Coverage of these types of events
is usually framed as a feature, with similar information tasks for PR practitioners.

Responses to media inquiries

There are cases when the company may not proactively send out a news release or hold a press
conference, but may receive requests from the media for comment. The public relations
employees are there to respond to reporters’ requests for quotes, examples or explanations. In
these cases, the public relations practitioner needs to act quickly to help meet the journalist’s
deadline, and the information tasks involve gathering additional background information about
the situation and arranging a meeting or conference call with the brand management to discuss
how best to respond.

PR features

As is the case for advertising message types, many PR firms and corporate communications
professionals are creating branded content or native ads. This is sometimes referred to as “owned
media” when it is created by the sponsoring company itself. Uniliver may create entire websites,
magazines or video channels specifically for this type of “owned media” content. The
communicator must have solid background information about the company and must know how
to write like a journalist as part of the information tasks necessary to be successful.