Has Technology Changed How Sales Professionals Close?

"Coffee is for closers"

 

By Alex Bender, Treeline Consultant

What comes to mind when you think of Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room, Wall Street, and Planes Trains and Automobiles?

Are you bombarded with images of fast-talking, aggressive, cut-throat, money-hungry salespeople with one thing in mind: Closing?

While, successful salespeople will always close their leads, there has been a shift in many sales business models due to Sales 2.0. Many sales professionals now have to lead prospects to make their own logical decision due to the evolution of technology and information now readily available to everyone, everywhere.

Many companies have shifted their marketing and sales initiatives and investing millions of dollars a year on the Web 2.0 movement and building inbound marketing programs. They are shifting their outbound, phone call blasting, hard closing sales models to a slow methodical drip through social media. They are educating their next potential sale through social media and driving their sales to them, making them want their product before the "sales guys" get involved.

 

 

Social Media Reach – Number of Active Users Worldwide:

 

 

Facebook: 500,000,000

 

 

LinkedIn: 66,266,528

 

 

Twitter: 75,000,000

These numbers might be surprising and might have you thinking, "ya…ya I get it, lots of people broadcasting pointless information into cyber space". Well, back in 2007, Dell Inc. took similar information and saw where the market was going and they launched a twitter campaign… By December of 2009 Dell attributed $6.5 Million in sales to Twitter….