Month: May 2006

MTV never killed radio, and the Internet won’t kill salespeople, or so says Mike Smock (vSente blog) in this oddly-titled post: Mark Babej, Nobel Prize Winners and the Coming Extinction of Salesmen.

Mike’s post picks apart this article by Mark Babej in Fortune Magazine that said:

“1. Salesmen in the before Internet (B.I.) world existed only because they held all the cards when it came to information.

2. That consumers in the A.I. (after Internet) world now hold all the cards driving salesmen into extinction.”

And while statement 2 can be true in some circumstances, Mike says the Internet has also boosted the power of the salesperson:

“In other words the signal to noise ratio is much greater today with the Internet than it was without. The need for a trusted, educated, experienced source of information is greater than ever. And the ability for consumers to really become educated consumers is more and more difficult due to the daunting number of alternatives and the complexity of the decisions. Smart sales folks will understand this and learn to use the Internet to make themselves indispensable. For better or worse, the Internet has tilted the playing field in favor of the salesman. Are salesmen going extinct? Quite the contrary.”

In case you missed the gem in that paragraph, let me repeat: “Smart sales folks will understand this and learn to use the Internet to make themselves indispensable.” To that extent, the Fortune article does provide good advice for being a salesperson AI:

1. Respect your customer.
2. Defy comparison.
3. Offer the best proposition to the right target.
4. Deliver what you promise.

Marketing Eye tip: Make your website a tool that your sales team can use to their advantage. One savvy salesperson said to me “we’ve got all the information our website when you need it”, hoping his company would be the one I turn to when I am ready to move forward. Be the marketing person whose website can back-up such a promise.

At the height of ‘the bubble’, the communications business was focused on the problem of ‘the last mile’. The last mile represented the challenge of bringing broadband internet to the masses. It was going from the poles and network to the individual consumers (or businesses) that was expensive and fraught with difficulties.

We B2B marketers face a similar challenge: We can bring the product to market, create a campaign to generate interest and explain the value, but we need to get the individual buyers. That’s why we have salespeople. But, boy, do we have a Last Mile problem!

These salespeople have only one chance to do it right, in most cases. And being on the receiving end of the pitch, I’m constantly amazed by how salespeople blow it. Top crimes, IMHO:

• Wishy-washy voice mails
• Not asking the right questions
• Barking up the wrong tree
• Not following up
• Pretending the Internet doesn’t exist

While we aren’t sales managers (or most of us aren’t), in we B2B marketers tend to be close enough to the sales process to influence (or adapt) to improve their efforts. Thus, I am launching a Marketing Eye for the Sales Guy Series.

I’ll be posting short rants on bad sales technique as well as links to articles and resources that I think a marketing manager will find valuable regarding sales. I’m not trying to solve the problem, just raise awareness and letting you figure out how to fix that bad “comb-over” of a sales pitch.

(BTW, if you haven’t watched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, you need to. At least the first five minutes when they raid the straight guy’s pad.)