Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

It isn't necessarily breaking news for selling, but make sure you read between the lines.  Here is what Seth Godin had to say:

Prediction: There will be no significant newspapers printed on newsprint in the US by 2012. So, you've got two and a half years before the newspaper industry is going to be doing something else with the news and the ads, or not be there at all. Does that change what you do today if you work in this business?

Insight! The newspaper industry is in trouble, but news is not going to go away, just the paper part. Those who are working hard to preserve the paper part are asking the wrong questions and are doomed to fail.

I don't know when the world will stop needing sales people but current buyers in the b2b world really don't need sales people to get information about products or services they need to solve today's problems.  They still use sales people to get pricing if it isn't posted on the website.

Insight:  Stop kidding yourself if you are selling on price.  If you get or lose business based on price, then what are you planning to do when all the pricing and negotiations are available on line?

Prediction: 90% of your sales will come from word of mouth or digital promotion by 2011. How do you change what you're doing today to be ready for that?

Insight:  As companies attempt to get more product into the market place with fewer and fewer people, what skills beside technological skills will you need to survive well beyond 2011?  In the words of Dan Sullivan, author of The 21st Century Agent, there are three things that you must master to keep your job:  Develop long term relationships, provide creative solutions, and move people to make decisions.  Currently, the microchip can't do those things but the question is not if but when?

I take from his blog that we need to stop thinking about what we need to hold on to in order to be successful now and in the future.  We need to let go of those systems, processes and ways we do business today that will inhibit us tomorrow.  Instead of holding fast to what we've always done, we must embrace what we have to do. 

There is nothing easy about this but survival is hardly ever easy.