{"id":1285,"date":"2007-11-13T11:22:02","date_gmt":"2007-11-13T17:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/11\/selling-in-the-information-age\/"},"modified":"2007-11-13T11:15:52","modified_gmt":"2007-11-13T17:15:52","slug":"selling-in-the-information-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/11\/selling-in-the-information-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling In The Information Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading an interesting article from ManageSmarter.com titled Sales Triggers for Advantage<\/a> and came across this opening:<\/p>\n

Do you remember the old days when the sales professional’s role was easier to manage?<\/p>\n
I’m not saying the actual job of selling was easier\u2014none of us signed up for a sales career because it was easy\u2014but the amount of information we had to work with was far less than today. Before the Web, you had a directory of industry professionals to cold call and some leads to follow up on. You drew from your own contacts and those of your colleagues, and perhaps read a trade magazine or journal for industry and market knowledge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I absolutely remember those days and I’m a Gen Xer.\u00a0 I still remember my first encounter with the World Wide Web on my PC running Windows 95.\u00a0 So things have changed dramatically in terms of information.\u00a0 The sheer vastness of information available today is staggering.\u00a0 It has become so unmanageable that we recommend reading our friends over at Hidden Business Treasures blog<\/a> to learn about how much of the information you are not finding.<\/p>\n
That leads to this excerpt:<\/p>\n
There’s no doubt that using information for profit is beneficial. But too many sales professionals spend unprofitable time looking for nuggets of information on the Web. If a salesperson isn’t careful, she can search the free Web for hours and not find credible information. And to add to the difficulties, all of the competition has access to same information on the free Web too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The author is exactly right – there\u00a0are salespeople who overemphasize research at the expense of action.\u00a0 With so much information available, salespeople have to be efficient lest they become overwhelmed.\u00a0 This balance in ability is measurable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The distinction is found in a salesperson’s Theoretical drive<\/a> in comparison to their Utilitarian drive<\/a>.\u00a0 If you have\u00a0a strong Theoretical salesperson with a lower Utilitarian drive, they will more than likely get caught up in researching prospects as opposed to actually contacting them.<\/p>\n
This approach is not negative.\u00a0 If you have a highly-targeted, complex sale with a finite number of prospects, this type of salesperson can be quite effective.\u00a0 For many other types of sales, this salesperson will run the risk of over thinking in the prospecting stage.<\/p>\n
Keep this distinction in mind next time you are hiring.\u00a0 And if you are not assessing candidates<\/a>, maybe it is time to start?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was reading an interesting article from ManageSmarter.com titled Sales Triggers for Advantage and came across this opening: Do you remember the old days when the sales professional’s role was easier to manage? I’m not saying the actual job of selling was easier\u2014none of us signed up for a sales career because it was easy\u2014but the amount of information we had to work with was far less than today. Before the Web, you had a directory of industry professionals to cold call and some leads to follow up on. You drew from your own contacts and those of your colleagues, and perhaps read a trade magazine or journal for industry… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9,5],"tags":[41,38,1754,42,43],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-kJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}