Pressure Selling ?

Pressure selling versus solution selling
Marketing Techniques that workMarketing is a field that involves a lot of tact and skill. Every business needs to take highly effective marketing as a make-or-break necessity. You cannot be successful without good marketing and sales techniques. People have to know about all the wonderful things your business can do for them, in such a manner that they can pay for them and be happy about it. Now this is what I will call solution selling. This further involves knowing who your customers are and getting so close enough to them to be able to virtually anticipate their needs and desires, and solve them.I will define pressure selling as the hit-or-miss kind of marketing, based on instincts and maybe some hard work, without or with little attention to basic rules or strategies that falls in line with the product in question. The fact is that though pressure selling is not the best kind, we cannot rule out our instincts in marketing. There has to be a combination of a far larger percentage of solution selling and a little of pressure selling. You can see why it has to be so as you read on.Marketing basically focuses on the consumers, or buyers. When the consumer needs and desires are determined, marketers begin to strategize on ways to educate prospective customers about the product’s most important feature, and how much the product meets their need, persuading them to buy it, and then make sure that their satisfaction is enhanced even after the purchase. In today’s business, marketing does not stop with sales. It is a characteristic belief in mordent business that marketing actually begins with sales, making more obvious, the profitability of selling more to existing customers than to new ones. The question in the modern marketer’s mind today is “what strategies and marketing techniques can be employed to turn a onetime customer into a life-time purchaser?” Now this is the question of one who wants to do the solution selling or marketing. Pressure selling stops with “How can I sell these products and beat the marketing deadline now?” the question you ask now determines the steps and strategies to be followed to meet the expectation.The new solution selling innovation adds value to the traditional marketing techniques of planning, organizing, directing, controlling and decision-making. Marketing use these and more to make out the best in the product lines, pricing, promotion and servicing. Marketing has a larger authority in most of the areas, and play a key determining advisory role in others, one of which is product-line development. They also supervise and ensure a profitable flow of products from the factory to the market.What other issues make up successful modern day marketing?Ideal marketing involves tailoring the product to meet a perfect or at least, a near-perfect need of all the consumers in target. A product-line is generally similar in style or design, but may differ in price, size, content packaging and quality. Even though a product line, as believed by most marketers must be correlated to customers’ needs, it is a solution selling marketing decision to adjust the items and lines of the product after a period of time in order to respond to market changes and also increase profitability. All activities done to this effect is what is referred to as Product Tailoring.The next is pricing. To price a product, two main factors are considered: the manufacturing cost and the competition in the market. It is not profitable to sell a product below the production costs, neither is it feasible to sell at a higher price than that offered by the comparable merchandise. Marketing products effectively might involve considering these and other important solution selling factors as the company policy, government regulations and other numerous factors.Product promotion is the motive behind all advertising and marketing techniques. Be it personal (face to face) kind or direct selling, sales promotions, building relationships or any other applicable and incentive method, all are geared towards a solution selling product promotion. It must be creative, informative and persuasive among other things. Today, the internet is about the biggest instrument in product promotion.Advertising is the one of the marketer’s biggest branding strategy. Beyond making consumers aware of a product’s special low price and benefits, advertising attaches an image to a product. Pressure selling of course advertises too, but solution selling advertizes with the market research results in view. A good marketer creates with advertising, such a covetable image and status of life that will no doubt, drive every customer to the product.Having gotten the audience, the next possible marketing step involved is direct selling. Personal selling focuses on one individual customer at a time. This is a relative marketing technique. This may be expensive but it is no doubt, effective. This is where the customers are given detailed explanation, careful price and payment negotiation, customized application, and all that. Sales promotion is another marketing technique that guarantees marketing success. This activity can either supplement and/or coordinate advertising and direct selling. In addition to the brand image building, sales promotion increases the volume of sales. Customers are persuaded to purchase immediately through the provision of special incentives like prizes, special rebates, extra products and so on. Promotions increase sales. Though they may reduce profits, it will be beneficial in the long run.Building relationship is the modern day marketer’s strategy of increased patronage and profits. It is easier and less expensive to service known customers. Activities like loyalty programs, customized provision of goods according to specific customers design and seasonal gifts are used to retain customers. These activities may also make informal marketers of the consumers, bringing in new ones. A passionate solution seller wants the customer to stay, so he makes every move to achieve that.It is also a marketing responsibility to decipher the best distribution methods and systems for the effective disbursement of products. While some products are most effectively marketed directly from the manufacturer to the consumer, others are best sold via medium like the internet. Direct sales via home shopping clubs, television, telephones and other electronic mediums are also good measures of distribution.Wholesaling is a very good solution selling marketing initiative. Wholesalers distribute goods in very large quantities, mostly to retailers, who in turn sell them in smaller quantities to the final consumers. Retailing today has transcended into something bigger today. Supermarkets, discount stores, self-service shops, have become a common place for all kinds of basic goods and services. There is an increasing emphasis on generating store traffic, transaction speed-up, sales volume expansion, chain stores vending machines and convenience stores. These are positive factors marketers should consider and take good advantage of.Marketing also involves transportation and warehousing. Ability to manage traffic and determine the best timetable of product shipment for product is a strong market success determinant. Providing effective distribution channels makes the marketing techniques used to make sense. The joy of the consumer fills up when the goods he bought reaches him on time.Now where does pressure marketing come in? Let’s put it simple: the marketer has got to strategize and get all these things done within a time frame. While some strategies you employ worked for some of your prospective, some others simply won’t. The truth is that though you advertised for a particular target group, your product will also be purchased by people who do not belong to your target. Now what if you only advertised in a place where only your targets lived. You’ve lost out on the minority, as well as their money.