Salespeople: Primary Roles

Salespeople play three primary roles? What are they?

The three primary roles salespeople play, according to Principles of Marketing by Tanner and Raymond (2010), are “creating value for their firms’ customers, managing relationships, and relaying marketing and sales information back to their organization.”

Salespeople create value for their firms’ customers by advocating and communicating the customers’ needs, desires, concerns, and preferences back to the company and find solutions (Tanner and Raymond, 2010). Also, since the salespeople are experts in regards to their products, they can best advise the customer as to which product is the best fit for them or adapt offerings to fit. In this way, salespeople create value that would not have

Since they are out in the field interacting with customers and the competition, salespeople gather a lot of important information. Their organization can only make use of this information if it gets to the right people promptly, and this is done by salespeople communicating the information back. Companies often use customer relationship management software to facilitate the gathering and dissemination of information regarding customers and their preferences (Tanner and Raymond, 2010). The information that salespeople gather can help with future marketing efforts, custom marketing and product offerings, and product development.

How does each type of salespeople create value?

The textbook list four types of salespeople based on activity as missionary salespeople, trade salespeople, prospectors, and account managers (Tanner and Raymond, 2010). Each of these type of salespeople create value for their companies.

Missionary salespeople reach out to decision makers who are not the actual customers but influencers. It is an indirect method of selling, examples of a missionary salespeople would be textbook salespeople and pharmacutical reps (Tanner and Raymond, 2010). These salespeople create value by informing influencers about their company’s

Scammers are always an issue and there are a lot of dishonest people out there trying to take advantage of those that are unaware. However, for professional salespeople, I think ethics do not get in the way of success in sales. I think it is the opposite, ethical behavior builds trust and is a requirement to be successful in the long term for salespeople. Their reputation and livelihoods depend on the relationships they build with their customers and their reliability to their organization. Salespeople who act unethically risk their company’s business, their jobs and careers, and possible legal consequences. Therefore, I do not think most professional sellers would take that risk. However, the fact that there are laws and consequences for deceitful and unethical practices underscores that it does exist and could be an issue. There is also the factor that pressure to act unethically often comes from salespeople having to work both with their companies and customers, the goals of which do not always align. Salespeople might do something unethical to close a sale with a customer, but in the long run, that type of behavior will be detrimental to the salesperson’s career, reputation, and could hurt the