Sales Training and Mad Men

“Mad Men” is getting ready to kick off its fourth season on TV. It’s my favorite show partly because there are so many sales lessons packed into it. It’s about a 1960’s New York advertising agency and is an accurate depiction of the times (or so I’m told -- I missed the sixties by a few years).

Is Sales 2.0 More Than Technology?

I’m just back from the Sales 2.0 Conference. I went with the hope that it would give me a clear idea of what “Sales 2.0” is. Unfortunately, it’s still too new. Conference organizer and Selling Power Magazine founder, Gerhard Gschwander, put it well when he said that, “Sales 2.0 is not concrete; it’s agile. We need to build as we go.”

No one seems to have developed a clear, all-encompassing definition yet. Probably the best one belongs to Anneke Seley who wrote the book, Sales 2.0 says that it’s “a more efficient and effective way of selling for both salespeople and buyers that’s enabled by technology.”

The World’s Most Complete List Of Job Titles For Salespeople

Lots of companies seem to struggle with job titles for their salespeople. For some reason, many seem leery of our favored, simple descriptor: "sales professional." In a few circles people go to even greater lengths to hide their real function behind an innocuous name (think "real estate agent.") So I set out to create a list of every euphemism I could think of.

If you've got one of these titles, there's a pretty good chance you're a sales professional...

• Consultant
• Producer
• Account Manager
• Account Representative
• Account Executive
• Account Associate
• Account Specialist
• Estimator
• Telemarketer
• Rep

Here are a few I've heard but wish I hadn't...

SALES 2.0 CONFERENCE

Next week, I’m heading to the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. I’m going because I desperately want to learn as much as possible about how technology is influencing (dramatically changing?) the sales role. I’m most interested in what technology will do to the relationships between salespeople and their prospects. There seem to be two camps. Here they are at their extremes:

First, there are the people who say that the need for salespeople will completely disappear. They argue that between technology and social networks, people don’t want (need?) to talk to salespeople anymore. They take Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” at face value.

On the other end of the spectrum are the people who say that technology will have no effect. They say that because “people buy from people,” computers and technology can’t interrupt that chain.

No surprise…I fall in the middle. There’s no question that it’s already had a pretty dramatic impact. The most “transactional” sales were impacted by technology in 215 B.C. when the first vending machine was invented (it dispensed holy water at an Egyptian Temple). However, complex, business-to-business sales will always need salespeople to help customers through their buying process.

The better question is: What will it take to thrive as a salesperson in an increasingly plugged-in world?

Anyway, I’m going to San Francisco next week to get a better handle on exactly what, why, and how technology will change our profession.

I’ll let you know what I discover.