WARNING
If you are a salesperson and have a weak heart look away now
When the corporate bible - Harvard Business Review - publishes an article entitled 'The End of Solution Sales' it is likely that a few of the 5.7 million sales people left around the world might sit up and take note.
According to Taskdrive this is the number of salespeople left in the world. Don't ask me how they know. On the face of it that sounds like a lot. Until that is you realise that the population of the world is over 8 billion. Ok, so there are quite a few kids in that 8 number - and, as any parent will tell you, kids are the best salespeople in the world!
The truth is that what I call the gentle art of sales has been dying as a profession for years. It is my proposition that of the 5.7 million less than 1 % really understand professional selling.
I believe there are three key reasons why 'selling' is in apparent decline.
Typical 'sales training' has long concentrated on sales technique....not sales values....and kills the reputation of the sales profession in the process.
Compliance Departments of global corporations are suffocating sales by casting the action of influencing buyers as a corporate crime
AI is rapidly making the need for any kind of human interaction between demand and supply redundant.
When I left university I eschewed the career paths of my learned friends. Law? How boring! Accountancy? Yuk! No. I wanted to join the police force - why not? With a bit of luck you will never have to see a desk or office - ever. Or so I thought. But in those days you had to be able to see. I mean with your own eyes. In those days there was no such thing as laser surgery and since I had the unaided vision of a garden mole that was the end of my career in law enforcement - before it ever started. So instead I decided to do the next best thing and become a trainee manager in a supermarket. Why not? With a bit of luck I would never have to sit behind a desk or in an office. Unfortunately I soon discovered that this career choice had one major disadvantage. You had to work. And very hard indeed. Realising my error, and still determined to avoid desks, I noticed a few sales reps visiting the store. I got chatting to one of them. “Oh yeah, my job is dead cool“ one of them said. “You get to visit loads of different places, we earn lots of commision and each year we have a sales conference in an exotic location.“ “Blimey“, I retorted, “that must cost quite a bit, travelling around the country“. “No not at all. I get a company car with private petrol paid for.“ That was it. My next career path step was defined!
Having just got my promotion at the supermarket , off I went to my new career in FMCG sales (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) complete with company car and an expense account. The company car wasn't quite what I expected. As the junior salesperson I got a retiree's cast off. I remember it well. It was an ancient Austin Metro with about 300,000 miles on the clock.
Image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay
Every time I changed gear, huge clouds of black smoke would billow out of the exhaust enveloping anyone within 5 mile radius with a poisonous mushroom cloud. Death by nuclear fallout would probably have been kinder. The car lasted 3 weeks before the cambelt snapped and the engine seized. My boss decided it had to be my fault of course. Ok, so maybe that wasn't the best career move after all.
Nine months later and I was still in sales but now with a different company, and one that took things rather seriously. I was elevated to the grand heights of a (brand new) Astra and an intensive sales training programme. Ignition systems are GO! I learned all about prospecting, record keeping, journey planning, negotiation, features, advantages and benefits, handling objections and learned tens if not hundreds of different methods of 'closing the sale' The 'now or never' close, the 'assumptive' close, the 'summary' close, the 'testimonial' close, the 'puppy dog' close, the 'thermometer close', the 'five year old' close, to name just a handful. My favourite was the 'alternative' close. Don't give the customer any option to actually say no. I learnt all about buyer psychology and, in particular, NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). And the result of all of this? It made me no better as a salesperson. It made me worse. Honestly. When I realised what was happening, I changed my whole philosophy. And my sales took off.
You see, all of this so called sales training was based on one simple premise. The premise that 'buyers' exist to be 'sold to' and that means you have to manipulate their thoughts in order to sell stuff to them that they inherently don't want. Is that too harsh?
WARNING
If you are a NLP Consultant / Trainer and have a weak heart look away now
Unbelievably (for me) ,NLP has been around now for 6 decades, yet in all that time it has proven to be nothing more than a pseudo science - no better than a 18th century quack medicine promising a cure for every known ailment known to mankind. Marketed in one easily dispensed glass bottle and a fancy label. Its exactly the same marketing strategy for NLP.
In all this time neither the effectiveness of NLP nor the validity of the theories have been demonstrated by any solid research. And this applies just as much to psychological intervention by way of medical help using NLP as its use in selling. Now I know there will be sales trainers, especially those earning a living selling NLP that will be up in arms at my comments. They will point to so called 'studies' and 'independent research' to prove the theory works. Conveniently of course. Since selling NLP is how they earn their living.
A 'quack medicine' is actually a kind description. Dr Rob Young puts it extremely well:
'Researchers and qualified psychologists are mostly damning about NLP. In a 2019 paper published in International Coaching Psychology Review, a group of experts wrote that: “there are many critics of NLP who view NLP as variably a pseudoscience, pop psychology or even a cult, with no evidence base for its effectiveness.”
Based on their own investigations of 90 articles that they found on the topic of NLP, they concluded: “In summary, there are no empirical studies that offer evidence for the effectiveness of coaching based solely on NLP tools and techniques.”
That’s important. They did not find that there were only a few scientific studies supporting NLP. They found no papers – zero, zilch, not one. '
Despite all my formal sales training, what I realised is that the only way to succeed in sales over the long term was to put myself in the buyer's shoes. I had to influence them by pointing out to them, hopefully respectfully and diplomatically, why they need my product. Above all I had to be prepared to do what no company would ever employ me to do - that is, walk away if I felt the customer really did not need my product at all. And I had to add value. By demonstrating trust. Studying NLP to 'rewire' a buyers brain to be fooled into buying my product was neither ethical nor did it actually work anyway. I had to demonstrate to the customer that I actually genuinely really cared; about them.
If a salesperson is to survive and prosper - without defrauding the customer - then they can only do that by truly adding value to the customer. 'Adding value'. Now there is an awful corporate word if there ever was one. What the heck does it actually mean? Let me give you an example.
The Lexus v BMW story
At this point my ex colleagues will moan, glance at the sky and go and make a cup of tea. Or drink Vodka. They have heard this story from me a trillion times. But for those of you who have not, here is a an example of what I mean about 'adding value'.
When the Lexus car brand was launched in the UK in 1990 it faced an uphill struggle. Despite its undoubted high quality and luxury credentials this was a car that had to compete with emotional well established brands such as BMW and Mercedes in the UK. Always German. 'The ultimate driving machine'; 'Vorsprung durch technik'. My God, so confident are the Germans of their place in the quality car stakes that they don't even bother to translate their ads for the linguistically challenged British. Why would they? You just have to say 'Made in Germany'. That was and still is enough. But made in Japan? By Toyota?
The new upstart Lexus had to make its mark. One Lexus salesperson in particular showed the way. He was trying to win a new corporate client. The prospect, a local company director, was changing his car. A longtime BMW driver he was curious to see what the Lexus was actually like. He went through the usual process. Viewing, test drive, sales presentations. The end result? He bought a BMW. In following up the Lexus salesperson was told, “many thanks for all your help which I really did appreciate but you know, in the end, I just love the feel, looks and quality of the BMW brand. You know, its BMW. You just know it's just going to be great. Sorry to disappoint you.“
By this stage the Lexus salesman had already put himself in the top 10% of all sales people in the world - by actually bothering to follow up at all. His next moves would take him into the tiny % stratosphere of the very best salespeople in the world. It explains, by the way, why top salespersons win disproportionately by far the greatest proportion of sales.
99.9% of salespeople would have (and would still do to this day) walk away and move onto the next deal. I know because I see it so often even now. But this salesperson was different. Very different. Shortly after taking delivery of his new BMW the director got a call from the Lexus salesperson. “Just following up. How is your car?“ “Well“,he replied, hiding his slight surprise to hear from him again so soon, “I am really delighted with it. You know it's lovely, well, afterall, its a BMW isn't it. Sorry you didn't get a sale but I made the right decision.“ “OK great“ said the salesperson, “I really am pleased to hear that you are enjoying your new car. So everything is as you expected?“ “Oh yes..... well“, he hesitated, “ok so the ash tray was broken. But you know, its BMW, they will replace it on its service no problem. No questions. No hassle. “
One week later and a small parcel arrives - strictly confidential - to the directors offices. In it is a BMW ashtray - exactly the right type for the model car that he owns. Alongside is a handwritten note from the Lexus salesperson. 'I thought you might appreciate a replacement ashtray, without having to wait for your next car service. Call me when you need another car. With the compliments of lexus, All the best'.
The point about this is that the Lexus guy was indeed working on the next deal. But not only with another customer. He was already working on winning the directors business when the time came round again for him to change his vehicle once more. Now THAT is selling. It marks the salesperson out as not only caring about the sale for Lexus but demonstrating that serving the customer was absolutely his top priority. By doing what he did he demonstrated that Lexus was superior. I often wonder what the BMW competitor salesperson would have said about that? Would BMW simply have taken for granted that the customer would always stay loyal to the BMW brand? I will let you answer that.
Fighting commodity: 'Your pound is the same as everyone else's'
Pardon me, I know it's rude, but I'm going to tell you about a couple of my success stories. Don't worry, there are plenty of failures too. But what follows was a good week or two.
I worked in financing for most of my career. Many years ago I had won a new customer who had decided, based on my representations, to lease all their new buses for their (newly) privatised municipal bus company. Having successfully negotiated the very first transaction I was subsequently mortified to find out that the second tranche of financing was given to the competition. In this case the leasing arm of Midland Bank in the UK. I went to see the finance director. He explained that it wasn't personal. It was just that the competitor came up with a cheaper price. “The thing is“ he said, “you are dealing in a commodity. Your pound is the same as everyone else's.“ “No it isnt“, I replied, “My pound is very different to theirs“. The FD was surprised, perhaps even a little irritated, at my challenge to his assumption. “What do you mean?“ “Well, what might seem like a cheaper price is not all that it seems. You see, my pound and their pound depends on the repayment terms and I suspect that my competitor chose not to tell you about the tax clauses in their documentation.“ Now at this juncture I am not going to bore you with technicalities. Suffice it to say I pointed out how possible future changes to taxation WOULD have very different consequences compared to my documentation. “Talk about printing your own money! You see, my pound might be the same when I purchase the buses but it turns out to be very different when you pay it back.“ The FD wasn't going to be so easily persuaded. “I can't believe it would make such a difference. Surely they will be fair. "Well “, I said, “put it like this. Let's not try and double guess. Why don't you talk with them. Ask them to retrospectively change the clause to match my far more favourable documentation - or even exclude it altogether. If it is not material then surely they will be happy to oblige. If they don't you know they have been selective with their proposal“.
The FD didn't just call them. He called the local branch manager in to discuss. They refused to retrospectively change the document tax clause. I knew that is what would happen. The FD called me. He told me they would never deal with that competitor ever again. I was able, in a polite but assertive way, to educate the customer regarding a topic he hadn't understood. From that moment he always placed business with me. Adding value. Imagine that. And no NLP anywhere in sight.
Another example, but this one rather annoying for me. I sold something to a salesperson when he was trying to sell to me! I was in the market for a washing machine. Now the thing is I love Miele. I mean, not in a romantic way. I just think they are fantastic quality products and I always buy them for that reason. (German again, of course). I walked into a white goods retail store - a well known nationwide chain in the UK. I looked at the selection of washing machines lined up - about 20 or so - from various manufacturers and price points.
A salesperson approached. “Ah“..he said....“can I help you? ““Well yes, I want to buy a washing machine.“ “Great “he said, “this one is the cheapest. It's a xyz (brand name withheld).“ “It's not the cheapest I replied.“ “Yes it is he said“ and quoted all the different list prices - looking at me as if I was mad. “You are talking about ticket price. I am talking about lifetime price“. “What do you mean?“ he asked. “Look, that machine is going to last no more than 5 years tops. The Miele has minimum life of 20 years. My neighbour has one that is 40 years old.“ He still didn't get it. “Yeah but the Miele is twice as expensive.“ “It is actually half the price of your recommendation.“ I replied. “By the time I am ready to replace the Miele you will be on your 4th or 5th washing machine.“ The salesman was undeterred. “Well ok but I can't afford the expense, I mean initial outlay.“ “Really?“I said, “I thought you offer finance plans as well. I would have to check the cost of that but I wouldn't be surprised if its still much cheaper, even with finance. Why spend so much to have an inferior product?“ After a bit of discussion he finally understood my point. “Wow, you are right“ he said. “I never thought of it like that. I'm going to need a washing machine myself soon, I think ill follow your advice and get a Miele.“ In the end I walked out of the store without buying anything. I just couldn't bring myself to buy from someone who simply didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
I'm still waiting for my commision cheque. Dear so called 'salesperson', if you happen to read this blog please ask your company to forward my commision cheque.
But it's not just in understanding you and your competitor's product where you can add value. Sometimes it's about helping the customer simply to refine the choice. Customers are NOT always right.
Now few people hold estate agents in enormous esteem. It's hardly surprising. Most are absolutely awful. I know. From bitter experience. My current house is the third in my life that I have bought. On each occasion of purchase and sale I have been bitterly disappointed at the lack of professionalism. Only boat brokers are worse. But that's another story for another day. My bitter experiences at the hands of estate agents are therefore all the more remarkable given that I came across one estate agent who was probably the best salesperson I have ever met in my life.
In the late 1980s there was a significant housing crash in the UK. Many people found themselves in negative equity - they owed more to the bank for their mortgage than their house was worth. Economic recession was hitting hard. Estate agents were going bankrupt as people stopped buying houses and also tried to avoid selling in a declining market. You would have thought therefore that a young professional on the up with a good income working for a bank that had guaranteed a mortgage and purchased his house for cash to facilitate a promotion and sponsored move would be a hot marketing opportunity. That person was me. I thought the same. How wrong I was.
I went to the first estate agent. “What is your budget? We will put you on our mailing list.“ The second agent, “What's your budget? We will put you on the list.“ The third the same. In most cases they seemed extraordinarily busy. Nobody wanted to spend time with me - instead they were busy looking into their computer screens doing something, heaven knows what. I simply didn't exist. I assume they must have been looking for alternative jobs. Maybe in retail white goods. After about 8 of these responses I soon learnt not to waste my time. They had trained me well. Like a young dog going to puppy classes. I went into each estate agents office and, not wasting any time, simply told them straight away - “I have x to spend please put me on your mailing list.“ I had been trained not to expect anything more.
Until that is one rainy, miserable day. I had been visiting one of the many houses I had been sent details of. It was awful. The fact that there was a pile of cow manure in the garden didn't help. Really. I was close to despair. Definitely at the point of telling my employer that I couldn't possibly move after all - I just could not find anything even remotely adequate for my family. I remember the occasion well. I was wet, cold and fed up. I saw an estate agent office on a high street. Reluctantly I walked in. “Hello“, I hissed, “I am looking for a house to buy. Please take my details and put me on your mailing list.“ A voice piped up from the back. “Oh, hello, I'm David, the manager here, welcome, do you have a minute? Coffee pot is always hot!“ I was taken aback. Had I done something wrong? Involuntarily I turned around to check behind me, just to confirm David was actually talking to me - the hitherto uninteresting one. “I would love to know a little more so that we can try and help.“ I can honestly say that in all the interactions with estate agents I had never ever got as far as this. I was shocked. But not as much as by what followed.
The manager wasn't the slightest bit interested in what I could afford. He simply asked me questions about everything else. And I mean everything else. “Tell me about yourself please. Who do you work for. What do you do. Oh interesting, Do you get a company car with that role? Do they pay your private fuel? What about your hobbies? That of you wife? How old are your children? What are you looking to do in the future? and on and on and on. I admit, that after 40 minutes of this I was becoming a little tired. Why can't this guy just put me on his bloody mailing list! And then, suddenly, just as I had reached my limit, he suddenly said, “well I think, I have exactly the house you are looking for.“ Now I was truly amazed. “No mailing list?“ I asked. “No no he said, I don't need to mail you anything. I have the house right here. I will show you the details.“ And out of a filing cabinet he produced the details of the most beautiful, amazing, stunning house I had ever seen. Of for that matter my wife had ever seen. I say 'house'. Of course it was nothing of the sort. It was an absolute oligarch's mansion. It was enormous. With room to set up a school if I wanted to. Or an army barracks. Complete with garaging for a tank division. Swimming pool of course. Land for my wife's horses plus a couple of hundred acres to spare. I swear the damned thing had a helipad. Sold! To my wife that is. I asked how much it was. He told me. I almost fainted. “But...but...I can't afford anything like that I said. It's crazy.“ My wife was disappointed, not for the first time, in her life choice of failed husband.
And then David said something that I have never forgotten. “No problem at all“ he said. I have many houses for sale. And I know that I will find your dream home. It's here now. On my books. We just need to figure out where you are willing to compromise. Let's go through this logically, together, with your wife. Obviously land is the biggest factor. I have beautiful family homes but by removing land for horses from the equation then the price comes down dramatically. But you don't have to compromise too much. You see I know where you can rent land for a reasonable price. If we can find your something in that kind of area then maybe that would be of interest? So how about moving to this area - he pointed to a map - its further out than you were thinking but you already told me that you have a company car with fuel paid and the land is very reasonable to rent here. I'm sure we can find something to fit your needs. And so the process of funnelling and refining my and my wife's wishes started. He skillfully funnelled my wishes and needs to a point where something realistic began to form. We discussed, and discussed, gradually narrowing down the choices, making the needs finally fit with the economic reality. Good local schools, transport, environment, fresh air, big house but not too big, room to grow but not crazy. Over the process of the next hour David was no longer an estate agent but our trusted partner. He was on our side, determined to find the best house we could have ever imagined, albeit right at the top of our budget! Finally he pulled out a house brochure. It was even slightly higher than my budget. It was further away than I had envisaged. But it was wonderful. It felt right. We fell in love with it. I am still living in this house today...after 30 years. David never did ask what my budget was.
This person was an education to me. Forget formal sales training and quack sales medicines. He finally brought home to me what I had felt and believed in for years - the professional value add sale - but was too blind to realise myself what I was trying to aim for.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Finding out about the customer. Working to the real needs of the customer not your own. Of course he had his list of houses. Of course he wanted to sell me one of his. But he took time. He took time to understand me and my family. He knew his product - lifestyle - in fine detail. The geographic area like the back of his hand. And the result was he sold me a beautiful home. He didn't need to spend his time on his computer looking for a new career in white goods. He was doing a great job right there. Much later I talked to him and thanked him for his approach. I told him about my mailing list experiences. He said, “you know, if a salesperson says I'll put you on our mailing list, it's just an excuse to avoid work.“ He was so right.
Death by Compliance
Don't get me wrong. The world needs Compliance. More than ever it seems. Rogue directors and employees (but mostly directors) seem to spend huge amounts of time and energy (when not looking for alternative jobs in the white goods sector) in devising schemes to defraud people out of hard earned cash. If they can't do that they train so called 'sales people' to do the defrauding for them. The difficulty is how Compliance is executed. And 'executed' is the appropriate word. I'm not going into the whole topic of Compliance here - come back to my blogs another day for that. For now, I will just talk about the effect of modern Compliance on the gentle art of selling.
Ever since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the world has gone down a prescriptive rules driven approach to Compliance. This has one significant advantage. It keeps an industry of consultants and bureaucrats gainfully employed in producing reams of paper driven rules and regulations that not even Einstein could keep on top of. The major disadvantage is that rules are descriptive based, not a morals based approach. One quick look at tax law shows the effect of that. Tax law is constantly trying to keep up with the latest tax avoidance scheme that is always one or two steps ahead of the legislators busy trying to keep the tax revenues flowing. It's just a game. Even a President of the strongest nation in the world claims it makes him clever to avoid paying tax. Morals don't come into it. It's much the same in the corporate world. As long as you follow the prescriptive rules then, by definition, you must be following the correct moral path.
I was brought up by a single parent mum. She never had to furnish me with a 20 volume set of prescriptive rules. Yet somehow she manage to instill in me a sense of right and wrong. Strange that. I wonder if she had tried the Sarbane-Oxley methodology if it would have been better or worse for my moral compass? I don't wonder. I know the answer. So do most people. Unfortunately prescriptive rules are the name of the game in the corporate world of Compliance. And sales is just one of the many areas that suffers, sometimes to the point of extinction.
Start a Compliance department and you can guarantee one thing. That department will do everything in its power to grow. It is the law of centralisation. Don't trust anyone out there in the provinces. Only trust in HQ. That's compulsory. And sales, by definition, is almost always out there.
I have seen the change. And it has become utterly absurd. In the pursuit to eradicate corruption - something that incidentally almost always seems to be the area frequented most by the most senior of management not the foot soldiers - foot soldiers must abide by a set of rules devised by senior management that are often so absurd and strangulating that it makes the acclaimed 'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller look like a comedy as opposed to a tragedy.
This is how absurd it can get. As a senior person responsible for a significant business within a large conglomerate, compliance policy required that I was to gain permission for any gift - including lunch, to a customer that was worth over 15 euros. Just to make the situation even more ridiculous I would need to seek permission, in advance, in the UK even though my actual business was abroad , in one case the other side of the world. Consequence? I would avoid at all costs any situation in which a customer would invite me for lunch. God forbid I would be embarrassed enough to have to avoid even splitting the bill. I tried telling people that our strict compliance rules prevented me from accepting or offering anything at all - bar a coffee. I soon realised that in certain parts of the world even that wasn't an option. Coffee and a chocolate muffin could get me over the limit and the dreaded compliance electric shock cattle prod will be on me. I certainly gave up trying to explain the situation to bewildered customers when I saw the offence that was implied. Too often they would see it as some kind of reference to their own attempt at dirty corruption - offering me a lunch that would cost more than 15 euros or vice versa.
By the way, regarding gaining permission. I really know for a fact that the beaurocrat granting that permission in the centralised UK HQ Compliance Team had never sold anything in his life. Let alone in far off countries with different cultures and traditions. It wouldn't actually surprise me if he started his career in white goods retail. At least I would have the comfort of knowing that the Miele he was persuaded to buy all those years ago is still functioning very well today.
I realised very quickly that compliance rules would be problematic for sales when I was told, by the Compliance team, that under no circumstances was the role of sales to influence the customer in their buying decision. This they confidently espoused would be tantamount to undue influence. What then am I actually supposed to do in a customer visit, I asked. Well, if you have to do a sales call then you should restrict yourself to no more than a generic presentation of the company's products regardless of what the customer actually needs. Otherwise the customer might claim that you tried to persuade him/her to buy. I was dumbfounded. Truly speechless. I went back to my office. And immediately received a call from my boss asking why our sales seemed to be diverging from budget. I kid you not. It's impossible to make stuff like this up even if you were to write a comedy show.
The divergence of Compliance departments demands and the reality of doing business in emerging markets - or any markets for that matter - couldn't be more extreme. I am not talking about bribery which is prevalent in many if not all emerging markets (and arguably even more in well developed ones too). I am talking about culture. Our businesses did not need a compliance department to tell us what business we should avoid. Indeed they would not have a clue themselves. For example, we knew from experience NOT to touch public business under any circumstances, despite, ironically, frequent pressure from senior management to do precisely those kinds of sales. Public business in our areas of specialisation was ripe with corrupt practices. We had a zero tolerance policy. Just don't deal with public business at all. Ever. But what should I say to the company directors of a SME who want to spend half a day with me to make sure I am someone who is not corrupt and can be trusted? Our customers were no different to us. They also wanted to know that the people they were dealing with were good people. This was the cultural reality where I was operating. It was what I was confronted with from my own customers on just about every sales call I ever made in our emerging markets. I arrive, the boardroom table is laden with sweet treats, coffee, tea, I am made to feel incredibly welcome and the discussions begin. About anything but business. Family, background, experience, values. Only when it is deemed that I am ok to deal with, that my word is my bond, do we get to discuss business. It takes half a day. Sometimes a whole day. Despite the customers generosity during this process, tea, coffee, chocolate, sweets, under no circumstances can I take them to lunch. Or a sandwich. This is compliance in the REAL world. A set of rules dreamt up by bureaucrats in a department far far away in some corporate HQ by people who believe that a flimsy mediocre washing machine is cheaper than Meile.
The result is a catastrophe for sales teams. They are put into an impossible choice. Leaving the customer in a perplexed state dubious about the strange credentials of a neurotic business or alternatively breaking these absurd rules. Rules that when broken in no way compromise the principles of fairness, a level playing field, honesty and commercial responsibility and a moral compass. It's called upbringing. If the people you employ dont have it then you are employing the wrong people. It is indeed a mad mad world.
The Robot wars. The automation of sales via AI
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
In the end there are only two possible reasons why sales can add value. One is that sales can educate. The other is that they can create trust. The former will increasingly be overtaken by AI. The latter will be killed by 'Compliance'.
AI is still in its infancy. Talk of AI and we think of self driving cars, Alexa or Siri, delivery robots, or computerised chess games. Google is also a form of AI. So too are the purchase recommendations you receive on Amazon. But we are just at the beginning. Imagine those purchase recommendations - but applying to complex business decisions based on the perfect knowledge of everything. You think that's impossible? I'm not so sure. And then what of the salesperson? What will be the point?
When Adam Smith invented the 'science' of economics we understand today he set out the rules required for a truly free and perfect market. One of them was perfect information. Needless to say in the real world that doesn't exist. Not by a long shot. Yet. AI is changing that proposition. Rapidly.
When I started out in sales in 1983, Google didn't exist. Neither did the internet. Not in my world anyway. If I needed information on anything I had three options. Speak to an expert. Write to an expert. Or visit the local library. Today I just Google. It's hard to overstate the impact of this form of AI. If I want to buy a car I don't need to speak to a salesperson. In fact, I would be well advised not to. Most of them haven't got a clue. I can Google to my heart's content to narrow down features, study reviews, find out about issues, reliability, and other peoples experiences. And when I have narrowed everything down to my perfect choice I can get the best possible deal online without ever talking to anyone. It might still be a way off from the perfect information assumption of Adam Smith but if he were alive today he might be excused for thinking that by the standards of his day we had got pretty close. And it's going to get a whole lot more sophisticated. The day will arrive when AI will save all the searching for us - we just put in our requirements and out pops the perfect deal at the best possible price all delivered to your door. And before you say, 'ah but, how do you know what you want' AI will figure that out too. Just input the answers to 'Mr amazing estate agent automated salesperson' and hey presto. AI will educate you. You didn't really want that. What you really wanted is this. Soon you won't even need to input data. AI will have it anyway. It will know everything about you. More than you do. Why? because it created how you think.
Sounds amazing and alarming all at the same time. Now I know how the Luddites felt. I guarantee this is a real possibility. Whether we really want that is another question. So where does that leave the noble art of sales?
Well, in fact, all is not lost. You see for perfect information you need perfect transparency. And the world is trying hard - very hard - to stop that. More and more legislation comes out on an almost daily basis about the protection and restriction of data. And if data is restricted then AI is too. There is a real fight going on - between governments wanting to know everything about us, and us not wanting governments to know anything at all. Between businesses knowing everything that there is to know about us and our dreams and us not wanting business to stick its ugly nose into any part of our private stuff let alone our dreams. Businesses too want to know everything about other businesses and they of course want the opposite. You get the point. Its a data war out there.
But there is another aspect that we ignore at our peril. It's an area we barely hear anything about but deeply serious and highly political and far reaching. In the process of democratising information we ignore the the algorithms that decide what information you see in the first place. And by doing that AI is influencing your and my behaviour, thoughts and actions. We don't even realise it is happening. If the top of the search page says ' Paid Ad' it seems reasonably obvious what is going on. But are you aware of how the algorithm works when it comes to 'free' information? It's not just Google. Every social media site, every website is capturing information, in one way or another, about you and your actions.
Most of us realise that there is no such thing as unbiased opinion. We are all biased by our own lens. But are we truly aware about how our behaviour and choices are being manipulated by search engines, social media, and the internet generally? And before we think it can't have too much effect just look around at the world - while you still have a free mind that is - the evidence is there in front of us - when organisations - public or private - hold the power over what you see it's utterly amazing how quickly and how completely they can control your behavior. This is the perfect propaganda and mind control packaged in the ultimate odorless, invisible form of AI.
Add in to the mix stealth AI. That is the AI that aims to combat other AI. How many pages that appear on Google are there because of the AI generated on a page of a website that takes advantage of weaknesses in the algorithms in Google? If Google doesn't seem quite as effective as it once was there is a good reason for that. Google itself if fighting an AI war - against other AI manipulating its search results. Yes, it really is a war out there.
I have no idea who or what might win. What I do know is that the war is on and this means that there will be a place for salespeople to play the role of educators for some time to come. For how long I don't know. My guess is that if you are in your 50s you don't need to worry about it. If you are in your 40s I would not lose too much sleep over it either. In your 20s? I suspect things are going to look very very different in your sales career when you get to my age.
There is no doubt in my mind that the internet and AI has revolutionised the obtaining of information to an extraordinary level. You only have to look at fantastic organisations like Bellingcat to see the immense public good that can be achieved through open source research - something that simply wouldn't have been possible even a few years ago. But to assume that it will all end up in a perfect information world - where whatever you want to know is at your fingertips, is I think very premature. Probably it's far from desirable.There is still a role to play for human beings, warts and all, to add value to the biased information overload we now experience. To make sense of it all. And to be the guards that guard the AI guards. Just so long as AI doesn't take over our brains.
For sales what this all means is that the only thing left that can add value is trust. But what is trust? To trust means to rely on another person because you feel safe with them and have confidence that they will not hurt or violate you. In an uncertain world, where everyone tries to know everything about everything and is even more guarded therefore about revealing things to anyone this might well be the defining characteristic of the great salesperson in the future. Actually, put it like that, I think that always was the key. Trust was always the ultimate sales differentiator. And I believe it always will be.
Image by Sven Lachmann from Pixabay
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