THE PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS OF PERSONAL SELLING IN MARKETING CONSUMER PRODUCTS IN NIGERIA

The goal of all marketing efforts is to increase profitable sales by offering want satisfactions to consumers over the long run. Many companies do not just sell product they like, they must first decide the need of the consumers before creating such goods Marketing is the activity directed at satisfying the needs and wants of the consumers. In fact, to be able to do this successfully, the marketer must be willing to determine the means in which the consumers could be reached, among such is PERSONAL SELLING.

Personal selling is the personal communication of information to persuade somebody to buy something by major promotional method used to reach this goal. Another definition of personal selling is an oral presentation of ideas about products or services with the aim of persuading potential buyers to buy such products or services from which they can derive maximum satisfaction. It is a social and economic service that a manufacturing organization cannot do without and at the same time, our commercial system, would collapse if there are no effective personal activities. Personal selling as a promotional tool is not a new phenomenon.

It can be carried out in face to face conversation and telephone could be used as well. Without personal selling, the organization would not be able to know products that are competing with its own.

It enables the salesman to know the reaction of the prospect to his product immediately unlike other forms of promotion.

Personal selling usually can be focused on individuals or forms that are known to the prospective customers, thus minimizing waged on people who in no way are real prospect. It is that its goal is to actually make a sale.

In recent times, it has been on the increase in Nigeria and in spite of all these, it is not all companies that employ it that end up succeeding or smiling to the banks, some still have a sad story to tell.

Why is this so? What could have been responsible? Why could a company succeed and another fail? It is against this background that this study focuses on the prospects and problems of personal selling as it affects the marketing of consumer products in Nigeria.

Some of the problems which solution would seek for as regard this study are:

1.     What are the effects of personal selling in the sales volume of consumer products?

2.     Does personal selling have any effect on prospective buyers?

3.     What can organization do to enhance the success of personal selling?

          The success of any business activities is based on how consumers could be reached. In the light of this, the study aims at achieving the following objectives.

1.     To identify what salesman and organization can do to enhance the success of personal selling

2.     To examine the environment surrounding personal selling for reasons that can enhance the success or cause the failure of personal selling.

3.     To identify the psychological make-up of a prospective buyer that can make a successful process.