SALES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

In Sales, who you know is much less important than it was ten years ago.  You no longer need a "rolodex" to reach prospective buyers.  Today, we're all reachable and knowable, through blogs, tweets, and profile pages (thank you LinkedIn).  A question that used to give salespeople a headache --- "Who is their IT Director, and how can I reach him?” --- is no longer a migraine.    

What you know is also less important.  Salespeople no longer own all the available information about their products/services.  Buyers don’t require brochures or on-site visits to get the ball rolling. Today, the buyer may know 75% of what you know by reading your website, whitepapers, third party reviews, and blogs.  And they may know quite a bit more than you, because a buyer can often get better access to competitive product data, including pricing.    

We are becoming a world in which all people are reachable and all data is available.  In that world, how can salespeople continue to add value?  

Here are a couple of answers.  

Salesperson as Catalyst  

The modern salesperson's task IMHO is not so much to "get in the door" as to get on the buyer’s To-Do list.    Regardless of their access to data, buyers still wrestle with priorities and decisions.    Salespeople need to understand that To-Do list, and try to find ways to help buyers overcome inertia (or to find reasons to  re-rank their top three initiatives).  

An example:  I have a long list of products and services that I am currently thinking about buying related to my home.  I will take action on very few.  But a polite, persistent stream of intelligent contact from a salesperson might get me off the dime on one of them, or at least get me to make a decision sooner.  

Salesperson as Advisor  

Buyers have more information, but can probably still benefit from advice on how to make sense of all that data.  Separating the wheat from the chaff is still a considerable task. This means that salespeople today need to deeply understand the competitive products, and to act as advisors and domain experts, as opposed to simply being an evangelist for their own offerings.