Selling
Of the five views of personal selling, stimulous response selling is the simplest. The idea is that verious stimuli can elicit predictable responses. Salespeople furnish the stimuli from a repertoire of words and actions to produce the desired response.
Stimulus Response Selling
An example of the stimulus response view of selling would be continued affermation, a method in which a series of quesions or statements given by the salespeson is designed to condition the prospective buyer to answering "yes" time after time, until, it is hoped, they will say "yes" to the entire sales proposition.
Stimulus response sales strategies, particulary when implemented with a canned sales presentation, have some advantages for the seller. The messages can be structured in a logical order. Questions and objections from the buyer can usually be anticipated and addressed before they are magnified during buyer-seller interaction.
The limitations of stimulous response methods can be severe, especially if the salesperson is dealing with a professional buyer. Most buyers like to take an active role in sales dialogue, and the stimulus response approach calls for the salesperson to dominate the flow of the conversaion. The lack of flexability in this approach is also a disadvantage.
Considering the net affects of this method's advantages and disadvantages, it appears most suitable for relatively unimportant pruchase decisions, when time is limited and when professional buyers are not involved.