3 ms·

How are salesman obsolete? Will a person that wants to pay 50k-500k a year for software+services really not want to talk to someone?

• epoxy 14y ago
  They'll talk to lots of people. It just won't be a salesman. Its more-likely to be existing or previous customers.
  • cookiecaper 14y ago
    It depends on your meaning by "salesmen", but in many cases in the modern enterprise ("account executives"), they're basically glorified customer support positions that get paid for retaining the customer and the ability to upsell. Same thing you get when you call the support line, except an account executive has a handful of customers to whom he is dedicated. If you're talking about sales that functions primarily as new customer intake and has no long-lasting relationship with the clients, like door-to-door sales, I can see a better argument for that going obsolete.
• brownbat 14y ago
  Yeah, the most mainstream predictions I've seen show sales adding around two million jobs over the next decade. People forget that a lot of services are easily adaptable to new conditions. It sucked if all you knew how to do was to manufacture the perfect buggy whip. If you know how to sell something, it doesn't matter if it's cars or cattle or houses or industrial robots. Yeah, you have to learn about your product, but the basic skill set is quickly transferable.