Professional Selling and Relationship Marketing: Moving from Transactional Role-Playing to Partnering

Relationship marketing is growing in importance, but academia has been slow to find methods of incorporating it into existing courses. Partnering, a form of relationship marketing, involves personal selling strategies designed to build relationships. This article presents methods by which traditional, single-transaction role-playing in professional selling courses can be redeveloped into partnering role-playing, which more accurately reflects the nature of professional selling in the relationship marketing paradigm.