The promotional tool of marketing mix which plays a persuasive, service and informative role and links a business firm to its customers is personal selling. Personal selling involves oral presentation of message in the form of conversation with one or more prospective customers for the purpose of making sales.
Personal selling is a powerful tool which helps to increase the sales of businessmen. The importance of personal selling to a business organisation may be described as follows:
(i) Effective Promotional Tool: Personal selling is a very effective promotional tool, which helps in influencing the prospects about the merits of a product and thereby increasing its sale.
(ii) Flexible Tool: Personal selling is more flexible than other tools of promotion such as advertising and sales promotion.
(iii) Minimizes Wastage of Efforts: Compared with other tools of promotion, the possibility of wastage of efforts in personal selling is minimum. This helps the business persons in bringing economy in their efforts.
(iv) Consumer Attention: There is an opportunity to detect the loss of consumer attention and interest in a personal selling situation. This helps a business person in successfully completing the sale.