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.
