Missionary Selling - Definition & Meaning

Published in Marketing and Strategy Terms by MBA Skool Team

What is Missionary Selling?

Missionary Selling is a form of indirect selling in which a salesperson tries to give information about the particular product to a prospective customer or decision maker who has an influence on the buying decision rather than directly selling the product. This is used to convince a person who has never used a product to buy it.


A missionary salesperson is often referred to a detailer. Missionary sales are common in technical, pharmaceuticals, text books, life insurance and other financial products. Technical organizations depend on system specialists to be their mystery sellers. These specialists generally work with customers to identify and solve their technical and operational issues while providing them information about the products which might solve these problems. Similarly salespersons of textbooks target professors by giving them free samples of books who in turn might recommend their students to purchase the same.


Likewise, pharmaceutical detailers, instead of selling their products directly to doctors or medical practitioners, provide them with brochures and pamphlets containing information about the product who then determine whether the medicines can be prescribed to their patients. A pharmaceutical detailer must have thorough knowledge about his product and must be able to answer the doctor’s queries to utmost satisfaction in order to convince him to prescribe the medicine to his patients.


Hence, this concludes the definition of Missionary Selling along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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