Differences In the Importance of Selling Techniques Between Consumer and Industrial Salespeople.

This article focuses on the differences in the importance of selling techniques between consumer and industrial salespeople. To distinguish the different emphases that these two types of salespeople actually place on the various selling techniques could be of immense value in the sales training process. By documenting the differences in selling techniques between consumer salespeople and industrial salespeople, training programs could be more specifically geared toward the more successful techniques most commonly used by professionals, rather than to a greater quantity of techniques that are available for use by all salespeople. The Personal Selling Process consists of seven steps, each of which is a major part of the selling process. These are prospecting for customers, handling the pre-approach, purpose of the approach, the sales presentation, handling objections and sales resistance, the close and post-sale followup. The results of this study measure the perceived importance of each selling technique, though this may not be commensurate with the extent of the use of such techniques by the salespeople who responded. In addition, the importance attributed to the selling techniques may not be equivalent to the effectiveness of such techniques. In addition, the discriminant analysis and the standard deviations in this study suggest that industrial salespeople were more consistent in their response than were the consumer salespeople. Future research is suggested which replicates this finding and sheds light on the variables which explain the variance.