Marketing

Unit 5

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Learning Objectives

Unit 5 is divided into two lessons:

Lesson 5A: Personal and Online Selling

Lesson 5B: The Marketing Plan

Unit 5 wraps up the promotional techniques with personal and online selling, then calls

on you to pull it all together for your project with a final Marketing Plan in place of a

final exam. This will complete the "learning by doing" part of the course and give you a

taste of what marketers do that affects our lives.

Overview of Written Assignment

Lesson 5A is really a carryover of two more promotional elements from Lesson 4B:

personal selling and online selling, which could be considered as part of direct marketing,

but which gets its own consideration in Chapter 21 of the text. Personal selling and sales

management could be a course of their own, and we will keep that brief without a written

assignment. Online selling, however, is a hot topic, even after the burst of the Internet

stock bubble, with much written about it. We will try to summarize strategic choices and

good practices for you, and we will give you a chance to design a Website for your

product, service, or organization (on paper - you will not have to learn computer

programming here). If your organization already has a Website, we will ask you to

critique it using the guidelines we give you for a good design.

Lesson 5B wraps it all up and asks you to pull together the components of the Marketing

Plan you have been building, lesson by lesson, and send it in. That will be, in effect, your

final exam, and hopefully something you can use in the future.

Instructor's Notes

Lesson 5A: Personal and Online Selling

"Cows don't give milk. You have to take it from them, twice a day." - Anonymous

In 1939, when Ben Feldman entered the life insurance business, selling $1 million worth

of insurance in a year got you into the industry's Hall of Fame. In 1956, operating out of

East Liverpool, Ohio, Feldman was selling $1 million a month, in 1966, $1 million a

week, and in 1969, $2 million a week. In February 1992, New York Life had a special

sales contest to celebrate Feldman's fiftieth year with the company. Feldman won,

selling more than $15 million worth of insurance that month. At the time, he was

recuperating in Florida from a brain hemorrhage (Corman).

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How did Ben Feldman do it? He tried phrases out on his wife, Fritzie. "Honey, listen to

this. Is it 'No one ever died with enough money' or 'No one ever died with too much

money'?" "No one ever died with too much," Fritzie advised, and the phrase entered his

sales pitch. He determined the number of calls he needed to make each day to make his

goals. He did his homework on any company he planned to visit. He listened and let

customers, guided by his leading questions, arrive at the conclusion he was

recommending. He bought lots of insurance on himself. His philosophy was, you come

to believe you are worth it, and then you can convince other people they are. And he

firmly believed that selling life insurance was a service to society.

Personal selling guidelines consistently repeat the things Ben Feldman did:

1. Polish your presentation and try it out on real people.

2. "Plan the work and work the plan." Make twenty-five phone calls or four to six

personal visits a day.

3. Target your best prospects, get referrals from satisfied customers, find out what

their needs are, and be persistent. It takes an average of four calls to a prospect to

close a sale.

4. Believe in yourself and your product or service.

Since not everyone has the personality to be a salesperson, we have not given you a

written assignment in this area. So on to the Internet!

E-Marketing: What Works on the Internet

Strategy: Information or Transactions?

The first decision you must make in designing a Website, or in evaluating one that

already exists, is what is its purpose? Typically, they break down into two types: (1) sites

that provide information only, including links to other Websites, and (2) sites that enable

the viewer to process a transaction, usually to buy something, and also to register for

future access, get on an e-mail list, or communicate with the site other than by e-mail.

Often, an organization starts with an "information only" site and adds transaction

processing later. We will concentrate primarily on those providing information on their

products or services (as opposed to pure search engines) and those which consist of

transactions