Essay About Lesson 5A And Final Marketing Plan

Marketing
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Unit 5
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.
Instructors Notes
Lesson 5A: Personal and Online Selling
“Cows dont 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 industrys 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 Feldmans 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).
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