Existing Business
In direct contrast to new-business salespeople, other salespeople’s primary responsibility
is to maintain relationships with existing customers. Salespeople who specialize
in maintaining existing business include order-takers. These salespeople frequently
work for wholesalers and, as the term order-taker implies, they are not too involved
in creative selling. Route salespeople who work an established customer base, taking
routine reorders of stock items, are order-takers. They sometimes follow a pioneer
salesperson and take over the account after the pioneer has made the initial sale.
These salespeople are no less valuable to their firms than the new-business salespeople,
but creative selling skills are less important to this category of sales personnel.
Their strengths tend to be reliability and competence in assuring customer convenience.
Customers grow to depend on the services provided by this type of salesperson.
As most markets are becoming more competitive, the role of existing-business
salespeople is sometimes critical to prevent erosion of the customer base.
Many firms, believing that it is easier to protect and maintain profitable customers
than it is to find replacement customers, are reinforcing sales efforts to existing customers.
For example, Frito-Lay uses 18,000 route service salespeople to call on retail
customers at least three times weekly. Larger customers see their Frito-Lay representative
on a daily basis. These salespeople spend a lot of their time educating customers
about the profitability of Frito-Lay’s snack foods, which leads to increased sales
for both the retailer and for Frito-Lay.
Inside Sales
In this text, inside sales refers to nonretail salespeople who remain in their employer’s
place of business while dealing with customers. The inside-sales operation has
received considerable attention in recent years, not only as a supplementary sales tactic,
but also as an alternative to field selling.
Inside sales can be conducted on an active or passive sales basis. Active inside sales
include the solicitation of entire orders, either as part of a telemarketing operation or
when customers walk into the seller’s facilities. Passive inside sales imply the acceptance,
rather than solicitation, of customer orders, although it is common practice
for these transactions to include add-on sales attempts. We should note that customer
service personnel sometimes function as inside-sales personnel as an ongoing
part of their jobs.
Direct-to-Consumer Sales
Direct-to-consumer salespeople are the most numerous type. There are approximately
4.3 million retail salespeople in this country and perhaps another million selling
real estate, insurance, and securities directly to consumers. Add to this figure
another several million selling direct to the consumer for such companies as Tupperware,
Mary Kay, and Avon.
This diverse category of salespeople ranges from the part-time, often temporary
salesperson in a retail store to the highly educated, professionally trained stockbroker
on Wall Street. As a general statement, the more challenging direct-to-consumer
sales positions are those involving the sale of intangible services such as insurance
and financial services.
Combination Sales Jobs
Now that we have reviewed some of the basic types of sales jobs, let us consider the
salesperson who performs multiple types of sales jobs within the framework of a single
position. We use the case of the territory manager’s position with GlaxoSmith
Kline Consumer Healthcare (GSK) to illustrate the combination sales job concept.
GSK, whose products include Aqua-Fresh toothpaste, markets a wide range of consumer
healthcare goods to food, drug, variety, and mass merchandisers. The territory
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