Advertising Salespeople Could Become Extinct

I read a post this morning by Daniel Ambrose, an editor for Online Pubishing Insider where he speculates that the success of Google’s and similar sites ability to create 90% of their revenue without salespeople. I have wondered about this also. I fundamentally agree with his premise, which is that even though the industry is changing, there will always be a need for salespeople. He states…

“Even more convincing should be the example of the financial services business.  Financial products are the ultimate commodity.  Mutual funds are merely bunches of stocks or other financial products that are priced daily, hourly or even by the second on exchanges around the world.  Stocks and mutual funds and other financial services, from the “boring” life insurance, to the notorious Collateralized Debt Obligations and the many other so-called-sophisticated financial instruments (still all made up of financial products that can be counted and measured), are sold by the highest-paid salespeople in the country.

What do media advertising and financial services have in common?  In both cases they have a clear and quantifiable history that can be viewed and analyzed for what worked. For both, past performance is no guarantee of future performance.  Yes, that is the problem.  The market keeps changing, customer behavior keeps changing, and advertisers are always trying to understand and anticipate that change.  So salespeople who bring a sophisticated understanding of their customer’s business and their customer’s needs, are valuable.  And they will be valuable as long as change keeps happening – likely to be true for a very long time.” Quoted from Are Ad Salespeople Doomed?

The problem is that so many salespeople don’t get it yet. They are not striving to become one of the elite that will survive. It is certainly a business of “Survival of the fittest”.