The rarity of thinking in sales

Recently, I’ve seen lots of pontification on LinkedIn about how technology and artificial intelligence is going to render human prospecting and sales development obsolete.

At Wigler Group, we could not disagree more.

Consider the ever-increasing flood of automated emails and Linkedin messages you receive. As the cost of automation decreases, more salespeople are using it, thinking that their process is nothing more than a “numbers game”.

If your customers are merely numbers to you, that may be true. But, if your business relies on long-term relationships with clients, industry expertise, and goodwill you’ve established in your community, then consider that treating sales development as an automated machine may be antithetical to your company’s ethos, and produce the wrong first impression about how your company deals with clients.

When is the last time an intelligent sales development person called you on your phone, knew who you were, and had something relevant to ask you?

If your answer is that rarely/never happens, then you can see the result of the entire sales development profession moving to automation, rather than old-fashioned relationship building.

This industry trend creates a tremendous contrarian opportunity to use the traditional channel of calling people on the phone and really getting to know them. As fewer and fewer sales development teams do this, it actually becomes easier to set yourself apart from the competition.