Your Evolving Role as a Sales Rep in the Digital Age

Remem­ber When…

Remem­ber the gold­en years of the sales rep? From late 1999 up until around 2007, being a sales­per­son in the home improve­ment world was, for lack of a bet­ter phrase, pret­ty darn good and reward­ing. Sure, you had to have some sales skills and be pleas­ant with peo­ple, but over­all it was fair­ly smooth sailing.

Most of my own for­mal sales train­ing took place in the ear­ly 2000s. There was a lot of com­pe­ti­tion, but mar­ket­ing dur­ing those years was not real­ly that hard. The phone just seemed to ring and leads knocked at the door with what, at times, seemed like very lit­tle effort. The sales­per­son would go out to the home, do a lit­tle bit of mea­sur­ing, take the order, and close the job at a good and prof­itable price. Times were good!

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Then, just like that, 2008 hit and the phone decid­ed to stop ring­ing. At the same time, web leads came to a screech­ing halt. Sud­den­ly you found your­self won­der­ing how exact­ly you were going to sell with­out the leads being hand­ed to you on a sil­ver plat­ter (as a side note, I was one of those sales­men, so the fin­ger in this post is point­ed direct­ly at me!). We did not exact­ly know it then, but it was the start of a new era, and busi­ness own­ers, sales reps, and mar­keters were all won­der­ing who to blame and what to do about it.

Some­thing Had to Change

In ear­ly 2010, I remem­ber one larg­er paint­ing con­trac­tor telling me that he was ready to fire one of his key sales reps. I was floored and could not imag­ine that he would actu­al­ly do it since the sales­per­son was an impres­sive clos­er. There was no way he would be eas­i­ly replaced. I couldn’t help but won­der, though, why the own­er of this busi­ness would be so close to fir­ing one of his best employ­ees. As I came to find out, leads were still at a his­toric low and his sales staff was putting the blame and respon­si­bil­i­ty sole­ly on the mar­ket­ing team. In oth­er words, they were say­ing it wasn’t their fault that they weren’t sell­ing. They essen­tial­ly want­ed to be fed their leads (remem­ber that sil­ver plat­ter I men­tioned?). As it turns out, the own­er sim­ply want­ed his sales staff to get more involved in lead gen­er­a­tion, and expect­ed them to prospect and take part in com­mu­ni­ty events.

Mar­ket­ing and Sales Must Work Together

Almost 5 years lat­er, that sales rep has his same job, and he is still a dyna­mite clos­er and inte­gral part of the con­tract­ing com­pa­ny. He took to heart what his boss had to say and stepped up to the chal­lenge. Leads are a bit more free-flow­ing again, but he still has to spend a por­tion of his time dur­ing the year net­work­ing and build­ing rela­tion­ships. Oh, and he is a real nat­ur­al at it too.

So, What Is the Miss­ing Link for a Sales Rep?

Mar­cus Sheri­dan of The Sales Lion recent­ly wrote an arti­cle in which he made the bold pre­dic­tion that by 2020: ​“The cur­rent mod­el of ​“sales reps,” espe­cial­ly in the B2B space, will be prac­ti­cal­ly extinct.” To read more of the con­text in which he made this state­ment I’ll post the full arti­cle below. I think you will find it quite intriguing.

I believe that what Mar­cus shared in his blog post is very accu­rate IF a sales rep does not embrace and get involved in qual­i­ty social media plat­forms, also known as ​“con­tent mar­ket­ing.” A sales­per­son can­not get by any­more with just being an order-tak­er, but must instead rely on proac­tive con­tent mar­ket­ing. Build­ing rela­tion­ships and trust face-to-face will always have its place, but today many of the seeds are plant­ed online because that is where most con­sumers begin their research. This has been the sky­rock­et­ing trend over the last few years and will only increase in the next 5 years, help­ing to make Sheridan’s pre­dic­tion not so much a spec­u­la­tion, but a log­i­cal next step. If a sales rep wants to stay in the game and be suc­cess­ful, he or she will need to jump with both feet into the dig­i­tal world of con­tent marketing.

How to Get Started

If you are in sales and read­ing this arti­cle, you most like­ly have a Linkedin account, unless a friend or cowork­er for­ward­ed this to you. I would strong­ly sug­gest that you not only use Linkedin, but tru­ly uti­lize it. What I mean is, rather than just make it a plat­form where you read arti­cles, actu­al­ly get involved in the con­ver­sa­tions. Join forums, share qual­i­ty arti­cles with oth­ers, make con­nec­tions and start shar­ing your own wis­dom! That’s right! It’s okay to be who you are and to be vul­ner­a­ble. Be pro­fes­sion­al, but don’t wor­ry about always pro­ject­ing only the most pol­ished ver­sion of your­self. You have noth­ing to hide. Your prospects want to buy from real peo­ple that they like and trust, and if you become that per­son they trust online you will gain a cus­tomer for life.

If Linkedin is not your thing, find anoth­er social media plat­form and stick to it. Start a blog, con­nect with peo­ple on Twit­ter, Face­book or Google+. If you are a con­trac­tor or design­er, I’d strong­ly sug­gest Houzz​.com.

Read Mar­cus Sheridan’s blog post 5 Dra­mat­ic Shifts That Will Occur in Sales and Mar­ket­ing by the Year 2020.

As always, let me know what you think and how you plan on get­ting your whole team involved in mar­ket­ing in the months and years to come.

*pho­tos cred­it: shutterstock