Personal Selling

Classifying Selling Roles

As we noted above, worldwide millions of people have careers that fit in the personal selling category.  However, the actual functions carried out by someone in sales may be quite different.  Below we discuss the four major types of selling roles: order getters, order takers, order influencers, and sales support.  It should be noted that these roles are not mutually exclusive and that a salesperson can perform more than one and possibly all activities.

Order Getters

The role most synonymous with selling is a position in which the salesperson is actively engaged in using their skills to obtain orders from customers.  Such roles can be further divided into:

• New Business Development– A highly challenging yet potentially lucrative sales position is one where the main objective is to find new customers.  Sales jobs in this category are often in fields that are very competitive, but offer high rewards for those that are successful.  The key distinguishing factor of these positions is that once a sale is made new business salespeople pass customers on to others in their organization who handle account maintenance.  These positions include:
  • Business Equipment Sales - These salespeople are often found in industries where a company’s main profits come from the sale of supplies and services that come after an initial equipment purchase.  The key objective of business equipment salespeople is to get buyers to purchase the main piece of equipment for which supplies and service are needed in order for the equipment to function.  For instance, in the photocopier industry certain salespeople only seek out new accounts and once a photocopier sale is made they pass along the account to other sales personnel who handle the sales of maintenance and supply products.
  • Telemarketing – This category includes product sales over the phone, whether aimed at business or consumer.  While in the US laws restrict unsolicited phone selling, the practice is still widely used in the business market.
  • Consumer Selling – Certain companies are very aggressive in their use of salespeople to build new consumer business.  These include: retailers selling certain high priced consumer products including furniture, electronics and clothing; housing products including real estate, security services, building replacement products (e.g., windows); and in-home product sellers including those selling door-to-door and products sold at “home party” events such as cosmetics, kitchenware and decorative products.
• Account Management – Most people engaged in sales are not only involved in gaining the initial order, but work to build and maintain relationships with clients that are intended to last a long time.  Salespeople involved in account management are found across a broad range of industries.  Their responsibilities involve all aspects of building customer relationships from initial sale to follow-up account servicing.  These include:
  • Business-to-Business Selling – These salespeople sell products for business use with an emphasis on follow-up sales.  In many cases, business-to-business salespeople have many different items available for sale (i.e., broad and/or deep product line) rather than a single product.  So while the initial sale may only result in the buyer purchasing a few products, the potential exists for the buyer to purchase many other products as the buyer-seller relationship grows.
  • Trade Selling – Sales professionals working for consumer products companies normally do not sell to the final user (i.e., consumer).  Instead their role is focused on first getting distributors, such wholesalers and retailers, to handle their products and once this is accomplished, helping distributors sell their product by offering ideas for product advertising, in-store display and sales promotions.