What Is the Difference Between Personal Selling & Direct Marketing
Personal selling and direct marketing differ in how they approach the sale. Both involve establishing a direct relationship with individual customers, but personal selling emphasizes the role of the salesman while direct marketing bypasses him. Personal selling establishes a personal relationship with the customer through the salesperson; direct marketing establishes a relationship to the customer through mailings or online.
Approach
- Personal selling is flexible, precise and interactive. The salesperson can adjust the message to the needs of the particular customer she is addressing, make sure the precise message that she is trying to deliver is received and take feedback regarding the message and the products. Direct marketing is more rigid, imprecise and mostly one way, but it is less expensive. The direct marketer can try to personalize its approach and ask for feedback, but these measures add expense and reduce the cost advantage that allows direct marketing to target many more potential customers for a given budget.
Costs
- The main costs for personal selling are the salary and possibly commissions paid to the salesperson. Costs for travel expenses come into play if the product requires visiting the customer at home. Costs for direct marketing include the salaries of the salespeople manning the phones or sending out the marketing materials. These costs are lower than for personal selling because each salesperson covers many more potential customers. Additional direct marketing costs include communication, mailing and shipping.
- Strengths
- The main strength of personal selling is that it has a high success rate because it is persuasive. Salespeople can address concerns on the spot and react to complex requests for information. Feedback allows them to improve their approach continuously. Direct marketing has a lower percent success rate, but its lower costs allow it to reach more people for often higher overall sales results. This makes it especially useful for lower-priced items, where the fixed cost per sale of personal selling would drive up the price of the product.
Weaknesses
- Personal selling's main weakness is the high cost per sale. An additional disadvantage is that the approach, message and sales skill may differ from one salesperson to another. High costs and inconsistencies mean that personal selling is mainly used for expensive products such as cars or for complex products such as financial services. Direct marketing has a declining customer response rate as direct marketing becomes more widespread, and it has increasing problems with privacy. To increase effectiveness, it must personalize the message more, increasing costs and encountering customer resistance to divulging more personal data. These factors tend to reduce the advantages of direct marketing over personal selling.
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