by Scott Stratman

In the classic story Death of a Salesman, old Willy Loman is faced with a changing industry. His tactics, used for hundreds of years to close business deals, dont work anymore. Frustrated, he knows he must change or die. The outcome is sad,
but the challenge still lingers in todays world.

The world we live in is changing by the nanosecond. E-commerce is the new wave, and we are smothered in dot-coms.

It seems as if everything we used to get from our friendly distributor, or could order when the salesperson called, can be bought online.

The fear of not having human interaction in the sales cycle is not new. This fear was raised when voice mail became the craze. Everyone left messages, and no one seemed to talk face-to-face anymore. We survived that one, and living without voice mail seems almost impossible. But can we live without salespeople?

Everyone in distribution and every facet of the economy is being forced to make changes. We have changed and changed over the last decade. Some companies still have an army of sales personnel on the street; others brought many of them in-house to staff the phones. However, if you look at statistics for many hard-goods distributors, sales did not drop through the floor because of those moves.

Now, we have the dot-coms, the e-commerce push and the streamlined channel. Whats next?

The modern sales arsenal
E-commerce clearly has advantages in todays costly world of doing business.

In the Civil War and the two World Wars, hand-to-hand combat was the norm. Modern military strategies and attacks are launched without so much as a gun drawn or grenade tossed.

Likewise, todays sales warfare is done with strategic alliances, vendor-managed inventory (VMI), electronic data interchange (EDI) and integrated supply chain strategies. The lack of face time with some of your customers makes sense (thats some of your customers!). Deciding to approach them with hand-to-hand combat or high-tech weapons depends on your long-term goals.

Successful distributors look at their customer base and do their homework on the cost of the sale. Often, the cost of making a sales call is not covered by the net profit realized when the deal is finalized.

Some customers require a lot of face time to ensure world-class customer service, while others order non-technical products that do not require further interaction from the distributor. In each situation, distributors must assess the bottom-line impact of the strategy they implement. This requires a customer-by-customer assessment, not a wide, sweeping approach.

Salespeople have skills that no electronic life form can duplicate. Through research, experience and numerous conversations, they have gained an understanding of the customers needs. They learned how to save the customer money through creative solutions worked out between the customer and the salesperson. Countless times, a salesperson goes the extra mile for a customer in need, treating him or her like the friend they have become, rather than just another customer number in the systems master file.

Salespeople often exhibit a whatever it takes attitude to make it right with the customer when something goes wrong.

While e-commerce holds numerous advantages, it is still new to many people and companies in the supply chain. It requires numerous systems to work hand-in-hand with each other, transferring data correctly without human intervention. Past experiences with technologies such as EDI proved that if it can go wrong, it will in the beginning. Therefore, salespeople must help wade through the issues with their customers until everything runs smoothly.

Deciding when everything is running smoothly becomes a huge question in some scenarios. Therefore, customers will always want one head to pat, one butt to kick when they need answers, service and support. Salespeople make up the first line of defense. Until they can be completely automated, they will always be key to winning the major battles.

Long live salespeople
E-commerce is a powerful weapon for todays salespeople. It augments their personal effort. It provides a framework for enhanced communication between all members of the supply chain. It is the infrastructure for tomorrows business environment. It moves orders along the supply chain quicker, processes them faster, pays for them electronically and reports order status more easily.

This benefits all salespeople, who spend many hours figuring out their customers order status and relaying that information back to the customer. Think about how much time could be saved if the various pieces making up the e-commerce continuum could free salespeople to do what they are trained to do, which is sell.

E-commerce will continue to be defined and refined in the hours, days, months and years to come. It will change shape a few hundred times in the next century. It will be more cost-effective than flying or driving an army of salespeople to customer sites. It will be here forever, and it will be a tool used by salespeople.

However, until an e-commerce system is developed that possesses a human heart, a human brain and a cheerful salespersons smile, it will not replace todays Willy Loman. Salespeople will be here for generations to come, but their tools will change.

The role of the salesperson will evolve into more information sharing and information processing than order taking. Salespeople will become more proficient in gathering technical data on the products they sell and sharing that knowledge with their customers. E-commerce will aid in the classic challenge of speed to market through product and information sharing.

As customers become more and more flooded with information via the superhighway, salespeople will be critical in helping them sort out the alternatives that provide the highest return on the investment.

Salespeople will win out over extinction. However, their species will be a more technical and more knowledgeable breed.

Scott Stratman is president of the Distribution Team, a consulting firm that specializes in distribution. He can be reached at , or .

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2000 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2000.

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