“The era of sales is over.” This is the mantra that began to be heard during the mid-90’s, in the midst of the dot.com boom that terrified sales training professionals everywhere—the dogma oft repeated by “new economy” soothsayers. People were no longer going to have to deal with those “tricky salespeople” being manipulated and cajoled into buying. The Internet was going to change all of that. With the click of a mouse, in the privacy of one’s home or business, the customer was going to make his or her own decisions and the even the best sales pitch could be resisted by clicking “no thanks” on a banner ad. New companies like Car Max built their whole business model around “no hassle” salespeople who weren’t on commission and there to “just to help.” Indeed, for many companies, the “we won’t try to sell you anything” strategy was a sure ticket to big sales! But, like sugar-free, store brand ice cream, the promise of the “no selling” strategy has left me with a bad aftertaste—I’m longing for the real thing. We no longer have “salespeople,” so we now have e-mail boxes filled with spam and banner ads that we can’t click off. I no longer have to be “sold” an insurance policy, so now I have to sift through scores of policies, figure out which ones make sense, and do all the research when I could be spending time playing catch with my son, or watching my daughter at gymnastics. I no longer have to “haggle” with that salesperson, so I can now pay a flat, inflexible amount for my car, and I can’t even use my skills to get them to throw in some free oil changes for the deal. No, we didn’t need to get rid of salespeople, we just needed to go from the store brand to the Haagen Dazs version—the solution-based salesperson.
What many have rightly reacted against are the salespeople who are still stuck with the old sales techniques from a by-gone era—those sales techniques that sought to impose a pre-determined product or service on an unsuspecting customer. The rules have changed. Yes, driven partly by the internet, but mostly by the customer who is increasingly more educated about their choices. Most customers would gladly trade spending their entire free time sifting through their own sales choices for many products and services—be it financial services, car purchases, electronics purchases, home purchases, etc.—if they knew they were dealing with a salesperson who was a trusted advisor, leading them to a solution that fit their needs and values. The key issue here, of course, is trust. Many experts on the consultative selling process agree that the whole idea of “closing the sale” has become almost irrelevant. The fact is, if the salesperson has done his or her job by matching product or service with the needs, wants and values of the client, the close should be no more than “why don’t we move forward?” I would trade my afternoon searching hundreds of life insurance companies and policies for one life insurance salesperson that I could completely trust. And I know I am not alone.
A few years ago, when developing our new program, The Dale Carnegie Leadership Mastery Course, along with the Dale Carnegie Organization, we made a startling assertion: the era of the internet, e-mail and increasingly “virtual” types of communications would make human relations skills even more of a critical skill in the future. Many experts were asserting just the opposite—what with e-mail and other non face-to-face communications, who could argue that one on one human relations skills would be less important? But think of it. In an increasingly virtual world, more and more people are becoming very rusty in the area of human relations—they simply are out of practice. Can you imagine how much more of a competitive edge you would have if you were to become an expert in this area? You would stand out far more than you would in generations past, when face-to-face communication was commonplace. And, the fact is, we are social creatures. Video sales didn’t diminish movie theater sales, and bigger homes with high-tech kitchens have not stopped people from filling restaurants on weekends. The same is true for the the sales profession and selling skills. Top level, Haagen-Dazs quality salespeople, I predict, will be even more valuable in the future. But, they will need to a be a new breed of salesperson---a high trust salesperson. Yes, the internet will easily replace sales where little trust is required—paying utilities, booking a hotel or airline reservation, etc. But, in the areas where a great deal of knowledge and investment is involved, there will always be a place for high trust, top-notch salespeople.
Dan Strutzel
VP, Publishing
N-C