Death of the salesman
Jason Fried over at SVN pointed an article on why the internet won’t be nirvana by Cliff Stoll from 1995. In it Stoll makes the point,
“Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople”.
That really got me thinking about salespeople. Could there be a more unauthentic role in capitalism then that of the traditional salesperson? I get shivers just when I hear the word.
But the internet is changing the sales perspective. No longer is it a person who goes around knocking on doors or cold-calling people. Everyone is becoming a salesperson.
I think in part it goes back to Umair’s point about interaction; everyone can interact with a product at a minimal cost. And then if you add the fact that sharing information has become super cheap and easy too, well then everyone becomes a potential salesperson.
By talking about NCAA basketball on my status on Facebook, by adding a bookshelf widget, by writing about 37signals on my blog, by adding feedback on a book on Amazon, by… you get the point. I’m a salesperson and so too is everyone else on the web. So if everyone is a salesperson 2.0 then no one needs to be a traditional salesperson and a salesperson is no longer needed. Finally, no more shivers.
