CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION The major purpose of this paper is to direct attention to the phenomenon of effectiveness of personal selling in Enugu Petropolis and to introduce simple possible ways of improving personal selling whi8le attention has been deliberately restricted to the British American Tobacco (B.A.T.) Enugu. There are other Promotional Mix variables such as Advertising, Sales Promotion and Publicity. It is argued that Personal selling is the most effective in Marketing. Personal selling has contributed a lot to boost a better image on both major and minor industries in any part of the world. In Nigeria for example, many industries have made impressionable image nationally and the praises goes to personal selling that have heralded their various characteristics, class placement status to the general public. Personal selling reflects at the individual customer and is a vital part of successful marketing plans (Donalson 1990) without communication through personal selling, the image of these industries would not be so diffused to the public. Personal selling at times is defined as “coordinated seller initiated effort to establish channel of information and persuasion to foster ideas or point of view”. Besides, personal selling gives amplified colour to the various environmental factor that sum up to the business. Today, many industries try to add cultural impression into their product and industry, merely to portray history of the company to people. Personal selling therefore gives simple interpretation of not only the product but also the industry that manufactured it. However, the impact of personal selling in the marketing of consumer goods is so noticed that it can not be overemphasized. The case of Nigeria is very vivid. “Personal selling is the critical link between the firm and the customers. Second, sales persons are the company in the customers eyes. Third personal selling may play a dominate role in a firms marketing programmes especially if a firm is using push marketing strategy”. In other words, it makes no sence to build on better mouse trap and keep it secret”. That is, it will make no difference if a nice product is manufactured and kept “Secret” but personal selling provides a better ground for its publicity to the public, the qualities of services accorded to customers and recommendation about production processes. Secondly any industry that undertakes personal selling will cut down on the cost of using Advertising and sales promotion. “There is more personal contact in personal selling than in advertising, hence wastage coverage can be reduced with personal selling”. (Edeoga P.10 1997) furthermore, personal selling enables customers to know various industries and their products in Enugu metropolises and to know which to patronize. In such cases, personal selling may not necessary be to catch new customers but are designed to the existing customer. Inspite of the fact that personal selling promotes the image of the industry before the public, it also have other advantages over other promotional mix variables. Cohen (1988) enumerated six major advantages of Personal selling over other promotional methods.