Death of the Salesmen

Excerpt from Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype

by Jay Baer

Chapter 4

Self-serve Information

Death of the Salesmen

We used to talk to a real person as a first step. To get familiar with the company. To learn more. To create bonds. Not now. Now we talk to a real person as a last resort when we’ve exhausted the supply of ZMOTs and have a query so specific only a human being can answer it.

This is most egregiously true in a category where the transactional stakes are often the highest: business-to-business marketing. In 2011 the Corporate Executive Board surveyed 1,900 B2B customers to uncover insights about purchasing behavior and found that customers will contact a sales rep only after independently completing 60 percent of the purchasing decision process.8 Sixty percent of the decision is made before the prospect identifies himself. Sixty percent of the decision is made before a call, or an e-mail, or an entry into your lead tracking database. Customers are ninjas now. They are stealthily evaluating you right under your nose.

This has manifest consequences on the role of salespeople, whose job used to be to develop and nurture relationships. No longer. The role of salesperson is now to answer specific questions capably and quickly, and to close deals that became possible due to the self-serve research performed by the customer. What does that 60 percent figure mean for marketers? A lot, according to the Corporate Executive Board’s Ana Lapter. “The 60 percent mark is in that part of the mid-funnel that is critical in terms of driving the buyers’ consideration of a supplier for a potential purchase,” Lapter says. “Therefore, marketing needs to de-emphasize tasks like thought leadership and white papers, and focus more on advanced activities, such as diagnosing purchasing needs and identifying internal barriers to purchase.”

Marketing needs less top-of-mind awareness and more Youtility. Sounds about right to me. Brian Halligan at HubSpot agrees, and has seen this shift firsthand:

“I started my career as a sales guy in the nineties. And back then, the whole funnel really was controlled by the sales rep. You’re cold-calling somebody, and you kind of manage the process all the way to the funnel. There’s asymmetric information. The sales rep has all the information the prospect wanted, including pricing and discount options. You had so much control. Now 90 percent of it has swung to marketing. It’s self-service, and you need to be able to be very, very helpful to see to the top of your funnel. The game changed a lot.”

Smart companies understand that providing self-serve information and giving consumers the opportunity to find answers for themselves, without being burdened by personal, synchronous communication, isn’t shirking their duty as marketers; it’s become their duty as marketers.

It may seem absurd to suggest that consumers will bypass human contact to make complex, expensive purchases. But it shouldn’t. Founded in 1999, Blue Nile is the largest online retailer of diamonds in the world. Who would buy a diamond ring, necklace, or earrings online without ever seeing them in person? Evidently, lots of us . . . including me, who bought an anniversary diamond ring for my wife. In 2012, Blue Nile posted more than $400 million of annual revenue.

Also consider the case of eBay Motors, the Internet’s largest marketplace for automobiles and accessories. As of the second quarter of 2012, 4.62 million vehicles have been sold on eBay,12 with more than 75 percent of those sales conducted interstate. How busy is the eBay Motors marketplace? A motorcycle is sold every seven minutes and a Ford Mustang is sold every forty-nine minutes.

Beyond changing the role of salespeople forever, this shift alters the way companies organize their products, provide customer assistance, and recommend vendors.

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