Wondering what is the selling concept?
You’ve heard of the selling concept in marketing and now you want to learn what there is to know about it?
What are the pros and cons of the selling concept?
In this article, we’ve got what you need.
We will look at the selling concept which, what it means, its advantages and disadvantages.
We’ve broken this article down into the following sections for your ease of navigation:
- Marketing concepts
- Selling concept definition
- Selling concept in marketing
- Selling concept advantages
- Selling concept disadvantages
- Takeaways
Let’s get started.
Marketing concepts
Businesses adopt some core marketing concepts to succeed in their markets and ultimately sell their products.
The marketing concept evolves with time and each company will adopt a different concept based on marketing conditions, nature of product sole, capacity, seasonality and many other factors.
There are five known marketing concepts:
- Production concept
- Product concept
- Selling concept
- Marketing concept
- Societal concept
In this article, we’ll look at the selling concept in detail.
Selling concept definition
The selling concept is a subset of the marketing concepts where a business is of the view that they can be profitable by producing their goods and persuading people to buy them regardless of the fact that customers actually have a need for this product.
You can say the selling concept is like hard selling.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the selling concept definition is “the idea that a company should sell the products that they have already produced rather than creating and selling new products that customers might want”.
The company adopting a selling concept will look at what products they have to sell or already produced and see how they can push that out to the market.
Selling concept in marketing
What does selling concept mean in marketing?
The sales concept is a concept where you don’t necessarily focus on your product, your production, your customer needs and wants or the societal impacts.
What you care about is to actually sell your products.
The selling concept is concerned with the actual “sale” of the product.
The selling concept in marketing will look at all the different ways a customer can potentially buy your product regardless of their needs.
The company’s hope is that a customer tricked into buying the product will hopefully like it and come back for more.
If the customer does not like it, the company’s hope the customer’s disappointment will be short-lived and they’ll come back once they get over it.
As you can see, the company is selling their product in a highly company-centric fashion with very little attention to its customers.
Selling concept interacting with other marketing concepts
The ultimate objective in any of the marketing concepts is to sell your product.
Whether you are taking a production concept approach, marketing concept approach or a selling concept approach, your company is looking to sell to be profitable.
The selling concept can interact with the other marketing concepts.
If your company adopts the marketing concept where you believe you produce goods intended to meet your customers’ needs, you may need to nudge your prospects to make a final decision to buy.
You’ll need to use the sales concept to close the deal.
For most companies, adopting a sales concept as the only marketing concept may be risky but leveraging the sales concept to complement another marketing strategy can be quite beneficial.
Selling concept advantages
The selling concept has some advantages.
Considering you are only concerned with the actual sale of your good and not worrying as much about the pre-sales and post-sales considerations such as product quality or customer satisfaction, your aggressive marketing efforts can result in your company liquidating unsold goods or selling goods in high volume.
By aggressively selling to the masses, you can potentially inject a good amount of cash into your business and get rid of sitting inventory or unsold goods.
The important advantage here is that you can potentially realize a return on otherwise stale or stagnating inventory.
The selling concept can work quite well if you are in an industry where customer needs change rapidly, perhaps seasonally.
If you missed your opportunity to sell during the right season, you’ll want to adopt the sales concept to get rid of your inventory fast so you can prepare for the next seasonal cycle.
You can even adopt a business model where you make important profits by selling in volume.
The sales concept works very well in turning over a lot of goods.
The selling concept can also work quite well for products that customers will not necessarily think of buying or things that are perceived as undesirable or unsought.
Consider the selling strategy adopted by companies like Coca-Cola or other soft drinks.
These are beverages that are not good for you and do not have any health benefits.
These companies will have advertisements directed to you everywhere, on TV, in the subways, digital ads, sponsorships and so on.
They will go out of their way to get you to buy their product and will in most cases aggressively sell their products.
This strategy works well for soft drink makers.
Selling concept disadvantages
The sales concept focuses on hard sales.
Hard sales means you push your product out to the customers, no matter what.
An important disadvantage of the sales concept is that the company adopting this marketing concept will not have a strong desire to produce great products or build a long-lasting relationship with their customers.
When you push goods to people without consideration of what they actually may need, customers may end up dissatisfied.
You may be incentivized to sell pretty much anything for the sale of profits.
With unhappy customers, you will not be in a position to cross-sell, up-sell or sell related products to them going forward.
Under this marketing philosophy, you’ll need to continually find new markets and new customers to make one-time sales in most cases.
When you exhaust your ability to push your product to new customers, your sales will decline and company profitability will drop.
Takeaways
The selling concept is a form of business orientation where a company believes that without an aggressive sales campaign, customers will not buy their product or enough of it.
With the sales concept, the company will look for ways to actively sell the product to its audience showing less concern and consideration for their satisfaction or needs.
If a prospect shows resistance, then the company will adopt a more aggressive selling tactics to get the product out the door.
The selling concept will be adopted when you have overcapacity or excessive inventory that could remain unsold.
This marketing concept does have its disadvantages as well as you may pressure a client to buy something ultimately leading to their dissatisfaction.
Dissatisfied customers may not buy from you again.
You’ll need to carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages of the sales concept and implement that in your marketing strategy for optimum results.
We hope you enjoyed this article.
Do you have any feedback to give us on the sales concept? We would love to hear from you. Drop us a comment.
