Selling is the core of marketing. It is defined as a process by which goods and services flow finally to the customers. It is concerned with finding the prospective buyers to actually complete the purchase of the article produced by the firm. It involves transfer of the ownership of goods from the producer to the buyer for value or money. The function of selling involves a number of activities:-
- Planning the production of need based goods
- Discovery of the market and the buyers for goods so produced
- Use of various promotional techniques for creating demand for those goods
- Determining the terms of sales and price, quantity, quality, nature of packaging, delivery etc for them
- Transfer of the title and possession of goods to the consumers
- Deciding upon the after sale-services to be provided to the customers.
Traditionally,the emphasis of the selling concept was on producing products and selling them by using strong persuasive means in order to increase sales volume and earn higher profits. There was no attempt made to determine the consumers' needs and wants. But over the years, the selling concept has undergone a radical change because of change in the thinking of business organisations as well as increased competition. The modern concept of selling emphasizes more on selling of satisfaction to customers rather than selling a product to them. Thus the term selling is generally used interchangeably with marketing. But there should not be any confusion between the two terms. There exist some basic differences between them:-
Marketing concept is a wider term which includes selling. 'Marketing' has an integrated approach to achieve long term goals. It starts from a well-defined market and focusses on customer's needs. It coordinates all the marketing activities that affects customers and produces the products that satisfy them. It aims at profit making by customer satisfaction. Whereas 'Selling' has a narrower and fragmented approach. It starts from the factory and focusses on the company's existing products(seller's needs). It involves heavy selling of the goods produced by using various promotional techniques such as personal selling,advertising,publicity and sales promotion. Thus, it aims at profit making by sales volume. In brief, marketing is customer oriented, while selling is production oriented.
Hence, effectiveness and efficiency in selling determines the volume of company's profit and profitability. A company should therefore have a well defined selling strategy in order to maximise its profits.
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