227: Selling Online Forever

<p>What are the biggest problems for salespeople in the online sales world today?  Cold calling would be number one, networking to find new clients would be number two and getting hold of the decision maker would be number three.  Is paddling around in the bitter cold and humid summers travelling to see clients inefficient?  Yes, but please, please give me that over trying to sell online.  The sad news is we are never going back to the old format.  There is always going to be an online component, because companies have found it works for them to have a dispersed workforce.  Are we really ready to play the long game of sales or not?</p> <p> </p> <p>Judging by how well people have adjusted to online selling over the last twelve months, the answer would be a resounding “no”.  If you had an existing client base then you could service them online because there was no choice.  The relationship had been sufficiently invested in to be able to extend the interaction from face to face to screen to screen.  They were happy with it and you had no alternative. </p> <p> </p> <p>New clients are more difficult.  How do you build the trust online with a completely new person?  We have to spend more time shooting the breeze on line with new clients at the beginning. Being “efficient” and getting straight down to brass tacks is dumb.  The meeting has now slid into the muddy ditch of a transactional arrangement between buyer and seller. The care factor is low, the forgiveness scanty and the margin of error is zero, because we haven’t been successful in building the relationship.</p> <p> </p> <p>Japanese buyers are often stilted, formal and awkward in meetingS with people they don’t know.  Being a foreigner allows me to play the gaijin card and get cut some slack for not being Japanese, with all the cultural and linguistic expectations that brings with it.  Regardless, our sales teams don’t have that card to flourish because they are mainly Japanese, so what are they going to do?</p> <p> </p> <p>What they need is some serious role pl