Among the Promotion tools, one of the most significant ones is personal selling, which has gained in importance, especially as companies expand outside the U.S. In Asia and Europe, personal relationships are important and professionals take time to get to know each other. They move more cautiously toward doing business with each other. In contrast, the American standard seems to be to get to the sale much more quickly.

How has personal selling involved you, whether as a seller or a buyer?

Some of you might think you've never done any personal selling, but I'd encourage you to consider things such as asking for a raise, convincing your parents to let you do something, or any other circumstance in which you try to convince someone else to "buy" whatever you're offering.

In 2000, the big phrase was "The Internet has changed EVERYTHING!"Not true, as so many "dot-bombs" found out by the end of that year. But the Internet did change some things about doing business, particularly in the area of personal selling.

In the virtual world, "personalization" is important. Visitors to a site want that site to look and feel a particular way as a condition of doing business with the online company.

What do you see as the advantages of selling online? Disadvantages?

What challenges must online sellers deal with?

Consider also the issue of trust raised in the Edelman article (Lesson 6.2). How can

"personal" selling, which relies on some degree of trust, be accomplished on the Internet?