Will salesmen Always Be Closing?

I finished reading Chris Anderson's Free a few weeks back and although the book wasn't quite as great a read as I was hoping for it did the job of making my brain whirr away with thoughts and started me thinking on many spinoffs of "Free".

One of the chief thoughts that has been swirling around in my head over the last little while is "What does the future hold for salespeople?"

This thought has been percolating because as is noted in the book, there are so many sources of free information these days and this dearth of info is only getting larger and larger as the internet continues to increase in popularity and more and more people have access to it. You combine that with a younger generation that grows up online reading forums, wikis, and interacting with discussion groups and online friends and you start to see why salesperson could be an interesting occupation to watch the development of down the road. What is a salesperson possibly going to tell people that they haven't already been able to find out on their own or from someone else online?

I, in fact, am a perfect example of this. If i'm looking for something specifically the first thing I will do is go online to try to find it. I'll check out specs, prices, and shop around. One such purchase I made recently was a portable sound dock for an ipod player. I search Future Shop, Best Buy, and London Drugs' websites comparing prices and features, reading the odd review that I could find on products that matched my needs. Once I had finished this part of the purchase cycle, I merely walked into the store, grabbed the product and marched up to the counter. In and out in 2 minutes.

But electronic retail stores aren't the only example of a possible death of the salesman. On the evening news last night they ran a story on how more and more people are using online stock trading tools to do their trading for them instead of using a stock broker. Will this effect the industry? I should think so. Granted stock traders provide a lot more value than people probably give them credit for as they research deep into potential companies to invest in, talk to the owners, and provide personalized recommendations to match your investing style. But more and more people are going to be doing their own research and using eTrade or another online brokerage to make their trades. Some people may not have much luck using this method and therefore end up back in the arms of an awaiting broker, but those that do have success could greatly influence the movement of the stock market as opposed to the traditional powers of brokerages to provide upward and downward momentum on specific stocks based on what they put their word/clients into. Somewhere down the road instead of seeing "Cannacord Capital forecasts targets of $30.00 per share for so and so corp" you may see "Facebook member ChunkyMonkey53 forecasts an increase of $1 per share by the end of the year according to their status update".

At the same time, if you've ever been on the BullBoards on Stockhouse you will realize how much crap there is out there and how it can be tough to trust the majority of information you read on some of these sites. Hence the role of a broker to de-crapify this information and make sure you get the appropriate facts you need.

Recently I even purchased a pre-sale condominium and to be honest, aside from writing up the contract, I'm not sure what the salesperson did to sell me. I found out all the information online, I looked through their display suite on my own, I talked to the bank on my own. So how much value are they really providing to be getting a major cut of the money that the company is getting off me.

Well now that this is seemingly spinning into a rant i'll close off here. My brother is a salesperson, and i've been a salesperson in the past, but I don't know if I would encourage my children to get into the profession in the future. It could be one of those things a few generations down the road that our great grandchildren miss out on, just like stamps, home phones, and paperback books.

My 2 cents on Free

There is a large discussion going on in the marketing world these days about Chris Anderson's new book Free - The Future of a Radical Price. Now, I haven't read the book yet but you can basically get a sense of what it is about by reading some of the reviews/postings about it (they are all available on this squidoo page). Some of the biggest names out there have chimed in including Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Mitch Joel. This clearly is a topic of great interest/debate.

From what i've read so far, the book is about the idea/marketing of Free as opposed to charging for something. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a review that didn't take Chris' side and has sparked Godin, Joel and others to come out on Anderson's side. These blogs actually provide some fascinating reading and some very interesting points of view regarding how the digital landscape is taking the world towards getting most anything "Free".

In my mind the process of moving towards a Free world is essentially already happening as we speak. More and more companies are making things available to their consumers without charge, and many of them are finding this as a great way to build brand loyalty, cross-sell, and up-sell. Now, they aren't giving away everything for free but they are providing value to their consumers without charging for it. Maybe Coca-cola has a water park set up for a weekend for children to enjoy free of charge or as discussed in the book Amazon gives away Free shipping for purchases over a certain amount. Free is being leveraged everywhere and is a great way for your company to keep your customers engaged and satisfied. Mitch Joel and Seth Godin are giving away their marketing/digital/management opinions for free on their blogs, would any company have given away their intelletual property 50 years ago? 25 years ago? 10 years ago? The digital landscape and the transfer of information as a result have changed business dramatically and your company had better be willing to adapt and take advantage of this new world. Otherwise your competitors will snag your customers for Free.