Sales is dying.
The job of professional selling is going away.
It’s dead. It’s over. Seller’s need to find something else to do.It’s been a great journey.
Like the candle-maker, the gas station attendant, and the soda fountain mixer — they all had their Golden Days. But eventually, time made the job irrelevant.
In every case, invention, social awareness, and cultural expectations pushed us collectively in a different direction.
That time is fast approaching for sellers.
The craft is dead.
Don’t believe me?
Here are 43 randomly eclectic truths about selling in today’s marketplace.
- We (all) hate con men
- Advertising is sexier than pitching
- Empathy matters
- Buyers don’t like being in the sales funnel
- Friends are more expert than sellers
- Social buying peer pressure exists
- Buyers don’t want features
- Seller’s sell features
- The hard sale is abusive
- Selfishness is self-limiting
- Information is free
- The trend to automation is making the people role irrelevant
- Buyers want to chose on their terms
- Sellers want less choice
- Internet commodity pricing is pretty persuasive
- Kindness is a lost art.
- The buyer’s point-of-view matters
- Sellers want a 7-step process over really caring
- Email communication is overused (and abused)
- There isn’t enough differentiation
- Our email messages are required to have an “opt out”
- Sales people are tired of old calling
- “Better” isn’t really clear
- Cultural shifts toward openness democratize rapport-building as a craft
- Buyers expect better service
- Companies try to explain away poor service
- Congress has to regulate telemarketers
- Sellers aren’t grateful
- Buyers don’t want to meet with sellers
- Desperate financial times force buyer curiosity
- Companies expect bad people to be good sales reps
- Sellers copy rather than improve what they admire
- Google is faster (and less threatening) than the Yellow Pages
- Access to opinions is ubiquitous
- Facebook and Twitter are more coercive
- Sales competition is based on price rather than leadership
- Sellers aren’t having the right conversations
- Buyers want clarification not information
- We’re (all) more distracted than we used to be
- Digital persuasion trumps direct pitching
- Seller’s misuse of communication builds distrust
- Buyers want less pressure when they’re “thinking about it”
- Most buyers don’t like most sellers.
Do you disagree?
But, there’s another perspective.
Selling, like any other commodity task of the past, will still be a valuable skill for craftsman.
Why?
They aren’t superficial.
They aren’t swept up in the social demands and pressures that strangle progress and generate distracting hysteria.
They are masters of a craft.
And that mastery is always in demand.
So you have a decision.
Are you going to be a craftsman?
Or are you going to start looking for another profession.
The world of “trigger events” and “30 seconds to rapport” is ending.
It’s over…
All the manipulation we have been engendering is fast approaching a crash course with reality.
Time to face the facts.
Selling is dead.
Maybe it’s time for you to do something else.
Like mastering kindness and practicing outrageous acts of empathy.
That’s a craft that will never die…
