The Death of a Salesman

Technology - The Death of a Salesman by Rick Docekal
By Rick Docekal


New doors for reaching out to clients are opening every day on the web. Networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace (to name a few) are creating opportunities for salespeople to reach out to new clients to "pitch" their product or service. Though these technological advancements may be the new frontier for business marketing, salesmanship is quickly becoming extinct.

I have dealt with salespeople for over 20 years and every time I see one struggling it does not take long to find out why. Most of us that are involved in sales understand the very basic premise of getting in front of your clients. An old saying that I like is an email is better than doing nothing, a phone call is better than an email, but a handshake is the best way to secure business. Salesmanship is not easy, and certainly not for the timid. Yet you will find sales departments in every business spending more and more time on the internet farming for business, and less time out pounding the pavement. That is because the timid salesperson has a safety net under their office chair. Being rejected in an email is easy, you hit "delete" you make up some excuse pertaining to how "crazy' the potential customer is for not considering you and you move on to your next email, well after taking a little break to check the baseball scores from last night or the latest fashion trends.

Is the Internet the Death of the Salesman? In many cases yes, but technology is not to blame. Those in sales that dedicate a large portion of their time farming for internet clients and do not pay attention to the importance of a phone call and face to face will not enjoy the success that a talented salesperson who understands how important building relationships is.

Take a close look at your organization, specifically your sales departments. Are your salespeople sitting in front of a client or their monitor most of the time? My best salespeople have been the ones that I often cannot get hold of, or take a long time to respond to an email I sent. That is because they are busy!

Yes, there certainly are many success stories on using the internet to build business just the same as you will find people that meet on the internet and eventually get married. But remember, even those that met on the internet and got married eventually met face to face to "close the deal".

Information provided courtesy of ArrowUp Consulting, Rick Docekal Founder/CEO. ArrowUp provides consulting on business growth, sales production and operational expense control. Visit the Founder's website at http://www.rickdocekal.com/ to see what ArrowUp Consulting cand do for your large or small business using the ArrowUp System.

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