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Disruptive Selling

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Disruptive Selling

A New Strategic Approach to Sales, Marketing and Customer Service

Kogan Page,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

In the near future, bots will buy from other bots and salespeople could be obsolete.

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Eye Opening
  • Insider's Take

Recommendation

In the not too distant future traditional salespeople may become as extinct as the dodo bird. Signs of the remarkable “disruptive selling” revolution are now evident online. Traditional sales rely on human-to-human interaction, but automation is upending this dynamic. Many sales now come from human-to-machine interactions, such as orders placed on Amazon. Thanks to the Internet of Things and advances in AI, customer-bot to company-bot transactions may one day supplant human-to-human transactions. Sales consultant Patrick Maes explains the momentous changes uprooting sales and describes far-reaching, technological advances yet to come. getAbstract recommends this eye-opening overview to marketing, sales and customer-service professionals.

Summary

 Breathtaking Changes

The business of selling is undergoing massive, transformative change due to four factors. First, developments in marketing technology enable companies to harvest comprehensive insights about what their prospects and customers want and expect. Second, consumers now demand superior, personalized value around the clock. Third, employees have become lifelong learners who want meaningful jobs and won’t accept being bored. And, fourth, companies are reorganizing to adapt to the latest technology, which leads to further change that requires workers to gain new skills. 

Such companies as Airbnb, Amazon and European e-retailers Coolblue and Zalando are leading the way and, in some instances, bringing about colossal shifts as they transform business practices. These firms champion “disruptive business models” that shake up the entire commercial world.

To illustrate, if you buy something from fashion retailer Zalando that you don’t like, send it back – no questions asked. When you order a ride from Uber, you can immediately read reviews of riders’ opinions about their experiences with your driver. If the book you buy from Amazon arrives with...

About the Author

Patrick Maes is CEO of CPI, a consulting firm focused on sales, marketing, customer service and value delivery. It developed many innovative practices now reordering the business world.

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