Are you getting better faster than the salesforce automation robots?
There seems little doubt that much of a sales process can be automated. Salesforce automation is the common term for it. It won't happen wholesale tomorrow or perhaps for another decade, however selling, as we think of it today is changing all the time.
Edit - I wrote this article in 2020. As with so many predictions, things are progressing faster than many of us expected. This article, Selling with AI, was written by an AI in 2023:
Just as people are deserting the high street in favour of online browsing and next-day delivery, B2B buyers don't want to spend time with sellers until most of their buying process is complete, and they know whose product they are going to buy.
Online meetings are so much more efficient.
The human element of a commercial relationship has always been vulnerable to the advancing capabilities of automation.
When I first started as a seller in the late seventies, B2B decision-makers expected salespeople to call and ask to see them.
They were mostly open to investing a few hours a week meeting vendor salespeople because it was a way to stay in touch with the pulse.
Our entry pass was news about the industry, the market, new products coming down the line, and a good lunch.
In my world of electronics, a car boot full of technical data and component catalogues helped.
The electronics engineers we called on would often walk us back to our cars to see what goodies we had to give them.
Those days are long gone.
Product management and marketing departments are continually producing valuable content to entice potential buyers into automated lead-nurturing funnels. For buyers, the information is now but a thoughtful search term away.
If you still have a field sales job, it is because you have the ability to add personal value to a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous process.
Today's field salespeople must be so much better than was necessary in the eighties and nineties.
The term, ‘field’ is redundant.
Only those who can deal with the many obstacles, manage the complexity, and cope with the ambiguity will retain lucrative lone ranger sales roles.
Staying at the top of one’s capability is demanding.
Continuous renewal, new learning and relearning are essential.
Otherwise, the scope of sales roles is narrowed until each job becomes a bit part. The researchers, the content developers, the openers, the follow-up specialists, the closers, the negotiators, and the account managers et al.
As automation chips away at parts of the process, sales roles will become fragmented and the days of the lone rangers will be over.
Perhaps they already are, and we just don't know it yet.
If you still want to fill sales champion boots, you must keep getting better faster than the robots.
Article by Clive Miller
Original article published on LinkedIn - September 2020
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