Cheap web tools taking salesmen off the roads
Firms are ditching travel and instead using the internet and social media to make sales
Patricia Sims spent most of the last 20 years selling on the road, pitching products for software companies. Two years ago, she traded frequent-flyer perks for a job that relies on internet meetings and social media.
"When I started in sales, anyone who did inside sales was thought of more as a telemarketer, someone who would call on consumers and bother people eating dinner," said Sims, 51, who now works in North Carolina for On24, selling services such as webcasting to businesses. "As time and technology progressed, it's just made sense to do that big presentation virtually."
US capitalism has often been driven by advances in the plying of wares. Arthur Miller's 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Death of a Salesman, placed the occupation at the heart of the American middle class and its longing for social mobility.
Now, firms from software and health care providers to manufacturers are trying to fill inside sales positions, shifting from expensive field staff to more affordable employees who use phones, internet and social media tools to reach business customers. By some estimates, keeping sales people off the road is 10 times cheaper and growing 10 times faster than meeting in person.
"There's a huge challenge" in hiring employees for these growing jobs, said Larry Reeves, who helped form the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals three years ago.