MARKETING MANAGEMENT SUBMISSION

DIRECT SALES TEAM VS DIRECT SELLING AGENCY

Direct Sales Team:

Direct Sales is when a company sells its goods and services directly to its clients or
customers without any third party involved. This is more of a direct route and is therefore a
conventional method of selling directly and cutting out middlemen.

Direct Selling Agency:

Direct Selling Agency (DSA) are persons or body corporate engaged by financial institutions
or a business to act as sales agents on its behalf. A Direct Selling Agent is different from an
in-house sales person in that the DSA would not be on the rolls of the company in fact they
would have a fixed period of contract and would have performance based compensation.

When and why DST should be used instead of DSA:

Target customers directly- Using Direct Selling Team helps to target specific group of
customers with tailored requirements. By taking the time to research and identify who are
most likely to need or want your products and services, you can focus your marketing
efforts where they have the highest chance of achieving results. A well-targeted direct
marketing campaign will also provide you with an accurate understanding of how your
customers are responding to your product and service offers. Also, it helps you to control
without the interference of external parties.
Improve customer loyalty- The Direct Sales Team, with its approach, offers a means to help
develop stronger relationships with customers. It also serves as a direct line of feedback
about the quality of product. These points of contact can help to turn a casual buyer into a
loyal, long-term customer. Because returning customers tend to yield a much higher profit
due to the low acquisition cost, direct sales provides an advantage over more impersonal,
mass marketing approaches.

Adaptability- The use of a sales force that deals directly with customers can help a direct
sales business avoid issues like a bottom falling out of the market. Consumers can state
explicitly what kinds of products and services they want or need. Businesses can input these
consumer-based insights in new product development. The business can also scale back
production or scale up production based on direct sales figures, rather than relying on
projected sales figures from wholesalers or retail outlets that may or may not pan out.

Provides more control- When a business sells direct to customers, they have more
control over how products are displayed, promoted, delivered and returned. If they put
their product in a retail store, they are at the mercy of the retailer, which has hundreds or
thousands of other products to manage, promote and sell.
Multiple Buying Influences- In a B2B market where an organisation makes a
sale to a business that in turn caters to the needs of another business can help
the primary organisation in influencing the final business to make purchases
from them. This in turn influences customers of customers.

No channel discounts – selling directly means that you don’t have to share the revenues
with a re-seller or channel partner that happens in the usual course of business where a
portion of the profits is eaten up by the middlemen. DSA will be trading profit margins
whereas DST is a company’s own entity.