Have you received this SPAM email yet that I received over the weekend?
“Do you sell? Do you still waste time and money meeting with prospects face to face? Are you still cold calling, using snail mail, or off-line advertising looking for business?
If so, you’re already out of business and are just too dumb to recognize it.
Today’s smart salespeople recognize and understand the power of Sales 2.0. They understand that 20th century selling is dead and if they’re still trying to sell that way, they’re dead too. They understand that social media is not only the wave of the future; it’s the wave of today.
If you think you can outsmart the market, you can’t. If you think that because you’ve been successful using outdated prospecting and sales methods in the past you can continue to be successful in today’s market using those same methods, you’re wrong.
Don’t let some ‘guru’ sell you some outdated idea of how to sell that no longer works.
We are one of the premier companies helping independent sellers like you capture the power of the internet. Formed by a core of three young, visionary, brilliant entrepreneurs, we are not bound by the blinders of what’s worked in the past but are instead in tune with the future. We’re not trapped by history.”
The email goes on in the same vein, selling the idea that the world has changed and what has worked for sellers in the past will no longer work today—and this company will, of course, help sellers learn how to forget all they’ve been taught and learn the “new” way of selling, the way that’s easier, more productive, that eliminates having to deal with prospects and customers face to face, that uses the tools of social media to prospect, sell, and service.
If you get this or a similar email, delete it immediately. It’s a deceit. I don’t mean it’s deceitful in the sense the people connected with the company don’t believe what they’re saying. They very well may believe every word they write. But what they believe is wrong. They misunderstand what’s going on in the marketplace.
I’m sure you are at least somewhat familiar with the idea of social media. Certainly if you’re reading this article on a blog or off a website, you’re internet active.
The authors of the above email are correct in the sense that social media is here to stay and its influence will continue to grow. Where they have gone wrong is in believing that social media is capable of changing the nature of our world. That is, that social media can change human nature. It can’t.
Certainly if you are selling a commodity, you may find a larger and larger share of your market purchasing off the internet without any interaction with a human being—or just minimal interaction via email or instant messaging. However, if you are selling anything other than a commodity, the majority of your market is still going to want to deal with real humans. Yes, a small percentage of your market may be happy making a major purchase without involving a human, but most will not. It’s human nature to want to deal with a human, to be able to ask questions and get immediate, personal answers, to negotiate face to face or at least earpiece to mouthpiece.
Consequently, those “20th century” prospecting and sales skills will be just as valid in 2030 as they were in 1990. Our technology may change, our nature won’t.
As buyers, we may take advantage of researching our potential purchase on the internet prior to connecting with a human, but that human connection will remain vital for the majority of us. We may use social media to help find potential suppliers, but it can’t flesh out the relationship we need with the supplier.
As sellers we may use social media to let prospects know who we are and what our capabilities are, but we must still interact to understand their individual needs, wants, issues, and problems. We can begin to connect but we can’t analyze or develop a solution based on the shallowness of a virtual relationship. We can use social media to gain attention but it can’t go to the depths we must go to develop the trust and loyalty we must have to sustain a business long-term.
There have been those who have predicted in the past that technology would fundamentally change the way we sell. They’ve been wrong time after time. When the telephone came on the scene there were some who predicted that salespeople would never again have to spend time and money meeting their prospects and clients face to face. They were wrong.
For some, the fax machine was the key to freeing sellers from having to meet face to face with prospects and clients. Now they could transact their business over the phone and when it came time to get the contract signed, all they’d have to do was fax it to the client, have them sign it, and then fax it back. Didn’t happen.
For others it was email and then instant messaging that would be the magic technology to change sales. We could now carry on a complete conversation while in the middle of doing other things. We could even send documents, pictures, even audio and video. Not only could we do everything via technology that we do face to face, we wouldn’t have our ego on the line as in a face to face meeting, so negotiations would go quicker and more smoothly. Wrong.
For the majority of us who sell in a defined geographic area, meeting face to face will still be the crux of our business. For those of us who sell on a broader field, the phone may be our primary communication tool, but building a deep relationship will still be the crux of our sales activity.
There are a gazillion social media experts haunting the social media sites looking to pick up new clients. One of the things I’ve noticed about a great many of them is their age—young, very young. There is certainly nothing wrong with being young and one might expect younger people to be more attuned to the new technology than someone older.
But there is a serious problem with youth (this is not to dismiss the advantages of youth—I’d like to have a bit more youth than I have)–a lack of experience, or as the email above proudly puts it, “not trapped by history.”
The young are not trapped by history as some of us longer in the tooth may be. But at the same time youth lacks a grounding that experience gives. Although I did not live through the expectations that the telephone would free salespeople from having to meet with prospects and clients face to face (I’m not THAT old), I have lived through the introduction of the fax, email, instant messaging, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the other social media. I’ve lived through several “revolutions” in sales that never materialized.
In January of 2007 I had written a post encouraging sellers to learn more effective prospecting strategies as preparation for a quickly coming recession. Of course, at that time the economy was doing well. I received emails from a couple of young MBA’s claiming that I didn’t understand the “new economy” where there was no longer a fear of recession or a slowing of the economy. These young MBA’s suffered from the same problem our young authors of the above email suffer from–a lack of historical perspective. They believed they were experiencing something new, something revolutionary. They weren’t, of course.
There are some great social media coaches out there—some of them young. Most social media experts recognize the limits of social media and actively work to help you meld your online and offline business activities.
By all means, take advantage of the opportunities offered by social media, just don’t buy into the hype advanced by a few misguided souls who believe technology will change how humans act. Our technology may be changing but human nature isn’t. Technology may help you sell but it isn’t fundamentally changing how you sell.
