43 Truths About the Death of Selling.

Sales is dying.

The job of professional selling is going away.

It’s dead.  It’s over.  Seller’s need to find something else to do.It’s been a great journey.

Like the candle-maker, the gas station attendant, and the soda fountain mixer — they all had their Golden Days.  But eventually, time made the job irrelevant.

In every case, invention, social awareness, and cultural expectations pushed us collectively in a different direction.

That time is fast approaching for sellers.

The craft is dead.

Don’t believe me?

Here are 43 randomly eclectic truths about selling in today’s marketplace.

1. We (all) hate con men
2. Advertising is sexier than pitching
3. Empathy matters
4. Buyers don’t like being in the sales funnel
5. Friends are more expert than sellers
6. Social buying peer pressure exists
7. Buyers don’t want features
8. Seller’s sell features
9. The hard sale is abusive
10. Selfishness is self-limiting
11. Information is free
12. The trend to automation is making the people role irrelevant
13. Buyers want to chose on their terms
14. Sellers want less choice
15. Internet commodity pricing is pretty persuasive
16. Kindness is a lost art.
17. The buyer’s point-of-view matters
18. Sellers want a 7-step process over really caring
19. Email communication is overused (and abused)
20. There isn’t enough differentiation
21. Our email messages are required to have an “opt out”
22. Sales people are tired of old calling
23. “Better” isn’t really clear
24. Cultural shifts toward openness democratize rapport-building as a craft
25. Buyers expect better service
26. Companies try to explain away poor service
27. Congress has to regulate telemarketers
28. Sellers aren’t grateful
29. Buyers don’t want to meet with sellers
30. Desperate financial times force buyer curiosity
31. Companies expect bad people to be good sales reps
32. Sellers copy rather than improve what they admire
33. Google is faster (and less threatening) than the Yellow Pages
34. Access to opinions is ubiquitous
35. Facebook and Twitter are more coercive
36. Sales competition is based on price rather than leadership
37. Sellers aren’t having the right conversations
38. Buyers want clarification not information
39. We’re (all) more distracted than we used to be
40. Digital persuasion trumps direct pitching
41. Seller’s misuse of communication builds distrust
42. Buyers want less pressure when they’re “thinking about it”
43. Most buyers don’t like most sellers.

Do you disagree?

But, there’s another perspective.

Selling, like any other commodity task of the past, will still be a valuable skill for craftsman.

Why?

They aren’t superficial.

They aren’t swept up in the social demands and pressures that strangle progress and generate distracting hysteria.

They are masters of a craft.

And that mastery is always in demand.

So you have a decision.

Are you going to be a craftsman?

Or are you going to start looking for another profession.

The world of “trigger events” and “30 seconds to rapport” is ending.

It’s over…

All the manipulation we have been engendering is fast approaching a crash course with reality.

Time to face the facts.

Selling is dead.

Maybe it’s time for you to do something else.

Like mastering kindness and practicing outrageous acts of empathy.

That’s a craft that will never die…