Personal Selling Functions in Promotional Mix

2.0 Task 1
2.1 Personal selling functions support promotional mix elements
One of the sectors within the service industry that has been influenced the most by the
changes in the globalization process and at the same time has been highly internationalized, is
the banking sector. So in competitive market if the commercial bank has to survive
successfully it needs to attract customers by offering them wider range of services. But to sell
this wide range of services, bank needs to employ different promotions to attract the
customers and to make them purchase from the banks.
One of the key aspects of marketing mix is promotion. So this consist of another major five
elements as follows.
 Advertising
 Sales promotion
 Public relation
 Personal selling
 Direct marketing
Above mentioned elements are called as promotional mix or communication mix. So the
organization could employ one or more elements from promotional mix depending on the
service, type of customers, company status and image.
Commercial bank Plc. is a service rendering company which have high demand and leading
in finance sector. But today most of Sri Lankan consumers are facing financial difficulties.
And potential customers are not willing to save their money since the cost of living is very
high and etc. Therefore commercial bank need to use those promotional mix elements to push
customers towards their services.
Mainly advertising services, here will give a good aware about their services to their potential
customers and it will pursue customers towards purchasing those services. So the use of
personal selling is more important and helpful to build a good and close relationships with the
bank and customers. For example when the bank introduce a new service like loan scheme or
new saving account for students and graduates the primary objective is awareness or giving a
simple message about the service. In like these situations personal selling is more important
for the advertising. Because to attain the objectives use of salesperson and communicating
with the new customers in face to face in home or in their education centres help to build

goodrelationships and pursue to purchase the services. And when the customers’ demand is
low towards the bank they can use sales persons to encourage and aware them about new
benefits that they can receive from the bank rather advertising in TVs, newspapers and
websites.
The personal selling is often the firm’s best source of public relations. In their day to day
activities sales persons represent the bank and for their services. For examples like public
appearances in sponsor activities, speaking engagements outside the bank for public need
personal selling. And when country faced recession in the economy for example fall in rupee
value and natural disasters commercial bank engage in those public activities in awakening
and offering their support by use of personal selling.
Any company integrating direct marketing, specifically telemarketing in to their fields of sales
operation makes their activities more effective. So in here bank can aware about their services and
new coming up `facilities to their customers by sending letters, leaflets and phone calling by the use
of personal selling. And use of personal selling supports the bank to reduce cost, improve satisfaction
and loyalty towards the customers. Other hand Commercial bank send direct mails to their loyalty
customers about new offerings like discount rates for credit cards and seasonal offering services by
using personal selling functions.
Generally sales promotions targeted at resellers benefit the sales force as well. And some sales
promotion tools have an attention in gaining quality that communicates an offer that will not be
available again to purchase something special. In Commercial bank giving and offering coupons and
other forms of price manipulation tools can be used to aware their services to their customers using
personal selling. Also their main objective of sales promotion is to attract new customers, to increase
their level of deposit accounts and to increase market share. So all these can be possible to achieve by
sending sales persons to selected different market segments. Examples, for new account holders they
send gifts, pens, coupons etc.
And this suggest that personal selling is much effective in making the awareness of the product
towards the purchase. Other hand it enables to explain all the aspects regarding the product to the
customers and also enables the bank to gather market information, feedbacks, etc. Most important
advantage on personal selling is that even though the Commercial bank is not purchased by the
customer, the sales person gets to build a good relationship.

2.2 Comparison of consumer behaviour variables with consumers’ decision making
process
Customers of Commercial bank Plc. can be divide in to two as individual customers and
organizational customers. And according to VALS these customers can be mainly identify as
strugglers, where most of individual customers who are generally in rural areas with limited
resources and makers which like to perform new things under do it yourself category as
shown in the advertisement of the loan programme.
So when discuss under psychological factors it includes information processing, beliefs,
attitudes, life styles, etc. which have personal of group influences on consumer behaviour. In
this advertisement it clearly have perception role or process where people force to select and
interpret sensory motivation into reality andalso give learning advices how to adapt in to
better environment while supporting necessary financial service.So here the development
loan advert depicts a background of rural area with limited resources and gives a message to
both strugglers and makers that all the difficulties they will have to face in performing their
activities.And after few years of understanding advert try to show that he try to develop and
make new changes to his business in time to time. That is presented by different changes in
background like environmental changes and withsome changes in his costumes, transport
modes and emotions in his face, etc. So accordance with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs this
loan advert described and showed higher level needs are dormant until lower level needs are
satisfying. That is why this advert address customers from step by step development from
low level to high level of needs, without directly showing that he is self-actualised by taking
the loan. Further in the start of the advertisement showing some psychographic factors like
self-respect where he was admired by another person in his village and sense of
accomplishment which he think what he is going to do next. And by these things it clearly
give good perception and learning to customers.
But even there is good psychological consumer behaviour, customers is aware of needs or
wants and search for possible ways to satisfy those in any time. So the awareness of
consumer is not an automatic process but it is actually selective external procedure. And there
are five stages in consumer decision making process which link with this advertisement.
First, is the problem recognition, which the consumer recognizing a problem as a need or
want. For example here he had a problem of developing his business activities and he