Sales Professionals – The Next Typewriter

Typewriters.

Seen one lately? Used one in the last 11 years? The answer above is “probably not.” If you had polled an audience in the 1960’s and asked if they thought typewriters would someday be “extinct,” I’d suspect the vast majority would say, “NO WAY. How could we ever live without typewriters?” And here we sit 40 years later and 99.8% of the people on the planet couldn’t find a replacement ribbon to save their lives.

So, what if I told you that salespeople will be extinct? NO WAY. IMPOSSIBLE. Aah, be careful. I predict that salespeople as we know them WILL be extinct. The antiquated process of rapport selling, relationship building, presenting slide decks, consultative sales—you name it—will all be replaced by unbelievably efficient data-based tools that will make today’s salesperson and sales process obsolete.

For us, that won’t be a big deal. In 40 years, I’ll be long retired and enjoying time with my grandkids. But what about them? What can we do now to ensure that our grandkids still have the opportunity to become effective, productive sales professionals? Here are some ideas:

1. Knowledge and Wisdom: Accumulate these and you become inherently indispensable.
2. Live technology: Utilize technology in your sales process. The role of technology in the sales and buying process is going to exponentially increase to levels we can barely imagine.
3. Be a business person, not a salesperson: This is one of our primary objectives with our clients. Be a business person first and a salesperson second. 90% of salespeople have it backwards.

Do what you can to save our profession from extinction. My grandkids will thank you.