16Chapter PreviewIn the previous two chapters,you learned about communi-cating customer value through integrated marketing communications(IMC) and two elements of the promotion mix: advertising and publicrelations. In this chapter, we examine two more IMC elements: per-sonal selling and sales promotion. Personal selling is the interpersonalarm of marketing communications, in which the sales force interactswith customers and prospects to build relationships and make sales.Sales promotion consists of short-term incentives to encourage thepurchase or sale of a product or service. As you read, remember thatalthough this chapter presents personal selling and sales promotion asseparate tools, they must be carefully integrated with the other ele-ments of the promotion mix.helping customers grow falls to the sales force. Rather than justsellingtoits retail and wholesale customers, CBD managerspartner strategically withcustomers to help develop their busi-ness in P&G’s product categories. “We depend on them as muchas they depend on us,” says one CBD manager. By partneringwith each other, P&G and its customers create “win-win” rela-tionships that help both to prosper.Most P&G customers are huge and complex businesses—such as Walgreens, Walmart, or Dollar General—with thou-sands of stores and billions of dollars in revenues. Working withand selling to such customers can be a very complex undertak-ing, more than any single salesperson or sales team could ac-complish. Instead, P&G assigns a full CBD team to every largecustomer account. Each CBD team contains not only salespeoplebut also a full complement of specialists in every aspect of sell-ing P&G’s consumer brands at the retail level.CBD teams vary in size depending on the customer. Forexample, P&G’s largest customer, Walmart, which accounts foran amazing 20 percent of the company’s sales, commands a350-person CBD team. By contrast, the P&G Dollar Generalteam consists of about 30 people. Regardless of size, every CBDteam constitutes a complete, multifunctional customer-serviceunit. Each team includes a CBD manager and several CBD ac-For decades, Procter & Gamble has been at the top of al-most every expert’s A-list of outstanding marketingcompanies. The experts point to P&G’s stable of top-selling consumer brands, or that, year in and year out,P&G is the world’s largest advertiser. Consumers seem to agree.Yo u ’ l l f i n d a t l e a s t o n e o f P & G ’ s b l o c k b u s t e r b r a n d s i n 9 9 p e rc e n tof all American households; in many homes, you’ll find a dozenor more familiar P&G products. But P&G is also highly respectedfor something else—its top-notch, customer-focused sales force.P&G’s sales force has long been an American icon for sell-ing at its very best. When it comes to selecting, training, andmanaging salespeople, P&G sets the gold standard. The com-pany employs a massive sales force of more than 5,000 salespeo-ple worldwide. At P&G, however, they rarely call it “sales.”Instead, it’s “Customer Business Development” (CBD). AndP&G sales reps aren’t “salespeople”; they’re “CBD managers” or“CBD account executives.” All this might seem like just so much“corp-speak,” but at P&G the distinction goes to the very core ofhow selling works.P&G understands that if its customers don’t do well, nei-ther will the company. To grow its own business, therefore, P&Gmust first grow the business of the retailers that sell its brands tofinal consumers. And at P&G, the primary responsibility forPart 1: Defining Marketing and the Marketing Process (Chapters 1–2)Part 2: Understanding the Marketplace and Consumers (Chapters 3–6)Part 3: Designing a Customer-Driven Strategy and Mix (Chapters 7–17)Part 4: Extending Marketing (Chapters 18–20)PersonalSellingandSalesPromotionFirst, what is your first reaction when you think of a salespersonor a sales force? Perhaps you think of pushy retail sales clerks, “yell andsell” TV pitchmen, or the stereotypical glad-handing “used-car sales-man.” But such stereotypes simply don’t fit the reality of most of to-day’s salespeople—sales professionals who succeed not by takingadvantage of customers but by listening to their needs and helping toforge solutions. For most companies, personal selling plays an impor-tant role in building profitable customer relationships. Consider Proc-ter & Gamble, whose customer-focused sales force has long beenconsidered one of the nation’s best.P&G:It’s Not Sales, It’s Customer Business Development
Chapter 16|Personal Selling and Sales Promotion463count executives (each responsiblefor a specific P&G product cate-gory), supported by specialists inmarketing strategy, product devel-opment, operations, informationsystems, logistics, finance, and hu-man resources.To d e a l e ff e c t i v e l y w i t h l a rg eaccounts, P&G salespeople mustbe smart, well trained, and strate-gically grounded. They deal dailywith high-level retail category buy-ers who may purchase hundreds ofmillions of dollars worth of P&Gand competing brands annually. Ittakes a lot more than a friendlysmile and a firm handshake to in-teract with such buyers. Yet, indi-vidual P&G salespeople can’tknow everything, and thanks tothe CBD sales structure, they don’thave to. Instead, as members of afull CBD team, P&G salespeoplehave at hand all the resources they need to resolve even the mostchallenging customer problems. “I have everything I need righthere,” says a household care account executive. “If my customerneeds help from us with in-store promotions, I can go rightdown the hall and talk with someone on my team in marketingabout doing some kind of promotional deal. It’s that simple.”Customer Business Development involves partnering withcustomers to jointly identify strategies that create shopper valueand satisfaction and drive profitable sales at the store level.When it comes to profitably moving Tide, Pampers, Gillette, orother P&G brands off store shelves and into consumers’ shop-ping carts, P&G reps and their teams often know more than theretail buyers they advise. In fact, P&G’s retail partners often relyon CBD teams to help them manage not only the P&G brands ontheir shelves but also entire product categories, including com-peting brands.Wa i t a m i n u t e . D o e s i t m a k e s e n s e t o l e t P & G a d v i s e o n t h estocking and placement of competitors’ brands as well as itsown? Would a P&G CBD rep ever tell a retail buyer to stockfewer P&G products and more of a competing brand? Believe itor not, it happens all the time. The CBD team’s primary goal isto help the customer win in each product category. Sometimes,analysis shows that the best solution for the customer is “moreof the other guy’s product.” For P&G, that’s okay. It knows thatcreating the best situation for the retailer ultimately pulls inmore customer traffic, which in turn will likely lead to increasedsales for other P&G products in the same category. Because mostof P&G’s brands are market share leaders, it stands to benefitmore from the increased traffic than competitors do. Again,what’s good for the cus-tomer is good for P&G—it’sa win-win situation.Honest and open deal-ings also help to buildlong-term customer rela-tionships. P&G salespeople become trustedadvisors to their retailer-partners, a statusthey work hard to maintain. “It took mefour years to build the trust I now havewith my buyer,” says a veteran CBD ac-count executive. “If I talk her into buyingP&G products that she can’t sell or outof stocking competing brands that sheshould be selling, I could lose that trust inaheartbeat.”Finally, collaboration is usually a two-way street—P&G gives and customers give back in return. “We’llhelp customers run a set of commercials or do some merchandis-ing events, but there’s usually a return-on-investment,” explainsanother CBD manager. “Maybe it’s helping us with distribution ofa new product or increasing space for fabric care. We’re very will-ing if the effort creates value for us as well as for the customer andthe final consumer.”According to P&G, “Customer Business Development isselling and a whole lot more. It’s a P&G-specific approach [thatlets us] grow business by working as a ‘strategic partner’ withour accounts, focusing on mutually beneficial business buildingopportunities. All customers want to improve their business; it’s[our] role to help them identify the biggest opportunities.”Thus, P&G salespeople aren’t the stereotypical glad-handersthat some people have come to expect when they think of selling.In fact, they aren’t even called “salespeople.” They are customerbusiness development managers—talented, well-educated, well-trained sales professionals who do all they can to help customerssucceed. They know thatgood selling involves workingwith customers to solve theirproblems for mutual gain.They know that if customerssucceed, they succeed.1P&G CustomerBusinessDevelopmentmanagers knowthat to grow P&G’sbusiness, theymust first helptheir retailpartners to sellP&G’s brands.P&G’s sales force has long been an American icon forselling at its very best. But at P&G they rarely call it“sales.” Instead, it’s “Customer Business Development.”