All Work & No Play

In the Now

BY Mark Henricks | August 1, 2002|

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It looks as if the future of selling resembles the distant past more than recent history. If there is a theme to this new selling environment, it's this: back to basics. "The philosophy of going in and finding out what customers need dates back to 1980," says Schiffman. "Now they're returning to what worked years ago, which is seeing people and establishing relationships."

One major difference between 1980 and today is the Net. Some see it will play a major role in one shift: that is, to deploy salespeople only to those accounts identified as having the biggest potential. The rest will move to less costly Web-based sales interfaces. "The top accounts are going to get the attention and the others, unfortunately, aren't," says Kieran.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs forced to cope with the effects of September's terror and the 2001 recession are now looking on the bright side. They've dusted off sales tricks they haven't tried in years. And they're not sorry. "The marketplace dictated we do this," says McClennan. "I wish we had done it a lot sooner."

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