Anne Mulcahy, Xerox CEO, has been successful in turning the company around, in part because of the skills she learned when she started out as a sales representative. Your book suggests that the objective of personal selling should be toA. increase profits from sales.

B. replace advertising.

C. confuse the buyer.

D. build a relationship.

The correct answer is D) build a relationship

Explanation:

Although A) is also correct, but it is correct for all types of selling, not only personal selling (the goal of sales is simply to increase profit).

In personal selling, the seller and the potential buyer interact face-to-face or voice-to-voice. It can be done through a call center by making a cold call to try to convine a client, while using a script or not, or it can be done in personal interaction in various enviroments: a retailer store, approaching the customers door-to-door, or even in the streets.

The idea is to build confidence, trust, to appear likeable. It has been found by many studies that people take decisions mostly based on emotional reasoning. If the seller is able to elicit positive emotions from the customer, he will increase the probablity of closing the sale.