Role of the Sales Force

Advertising consists of one-way, non-personal communication with focused consumer groups. Personal selling includes two-way, personal communication among individual consumers and salespeople. Personal selling can be proving more effective than advertising in more complex selling situations.  The role of personal selling varies from company to company. Some of the firms have no salespeople at all. The sales force serves as a decisive link between a company and its customers.  The salesperson can represent buyer and sellerboth. They represent company to the customer and customers to the company. Salespeople are becoming more customer-oriented and market-focused. The old view was that salespeople might be concerned with sales and the company might be concerned with profit.  The new view is that salespeople should be concerned with more than only producing sales-they has to know how to achieve customer satisfaction and company profit.