public relations, sales promotion and professional selling. How these three concepts are related? Which of the three is more important?

 The topics of Unit 7 are public relations, sales promotion, and professional selling. Although these three concepts are in different chapters, they are related and influence each other. Recall that public relations are the activities of managing the release of information between an individual or an organization and the public in order to affect public perception. Sales promotion is one of the elements of the promotional mix such as advertising, personal selling, and direct marketing. In professional selling, we learned mostly about what salespeople do and what roles do they play(such as create value, gathering information, and managing relationships).

Generally, all these three activities are trying to find the demands, satisfy the needs, and build stronger connections. Professional selling is not just about the salesperson or the products and services. It’s about the customers and fulfilling their needs, helping them make the world a better place. Public relations can help the world know what organizations are doing for upgrading our future. For instance, loyalty programs are designed to get repeat business. Not only it benefits businesses but also helps people by saving time for searching their needs. 

I find it is hard to choose which of the three concepts is more important because they influence each other in some way. For instance, bad public relations lead to bad sales no matter how hard you work on the sales promotions. You can purchase similar products from different companies with different reputations. The key is that the next time you want to buy the product, you will search the companies you like first. 

Consider it from the reverse, if we put all the effort into public relations since we consider it as the most important one. It like putting a new engine inside an old car's body. The car can move for sure, but it cannot handle the powerful engine. Although I know Lamborghini and Ferrari are excellent, I need the final steps to help me give up the other option such as a better price, lovely salespeople, a loyalty program, or any other factors. That is no doubt that great public relations efforts can help enterprises build rapport with their customers and supplement their sales efforts. However, sales promotions and professional selling are still great or even necessary tools enterprises should consider.

Reference

Tanner, J. & Raymond, M.A. (2015). Principles of Marketing. University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa.