Technology in sales: does it help sell or dehumanize the process?

Technology in sales: does it help sell or dehumanize the process?

Technology has invaded our lives and the business world in a few years. Today it seems that we are witnessing an inversion of traditional values: businesses are much more online in the clouds and digital than offline.

A company that focuses its operations outside the web environment is already finding ways to use the internet in some way to generate demand.

Is it impossible to operate a business without using technology in sales?

Using technology in sales

The sales reality has shown an increasing need for the sales professional to be connected all the time.

This means that technology in organizations must be seen as an essential benefit for better business performance.

That said, you need to start making technology as a whole (gadgets and software) a great ally of your business team, so they can serve as great allies in the mission of helping the salesperson improve their performance.

As much as all the concepts of digital marketing, online relationship, customer service and other aspects of the connected world are entering our lives more and more every day, many vendors and companies do not know how technology in organizations can effectively influence business.

On the one hand, we have the consensus that technology is positive and that it can be healthy for business outcome and success.

On the other hand, we have the continuous wave of resistance to the adoption of new technologies in business by salespeople and professionals in the area.

That said, we have the growing and constant fact that technology can and should be increasingly incorporated into business, as a way to enable and simplify information, not only to commercial teams, but also to entrepreneurs.

Resistance to the adoption of new ideas, such as CRM, ERPs and project and account management software, is increasingly falling apart when new companies provide managers with an intuitive way to control, measure and analyze their firepower.

So, if technology in companies is growing as an ally of entrepreneurs, who already understand its role in the management of their business and their team, why can’t it be seen as an ally in sales as well?

Are we getting in the way of the exaggerated use of current technologies?

E-commerce continues to be a great opportunity to sell through the internet, now that the elderly are adopting the internet and social media as a channel for relationship, shopping and leisure.

Companies are increasingly implementing digital processes in their departments. Abbreviations such as ERP, SAP, CRM, Analytics, among others, are already part of the daily life of micro, small and large companies.

Nowadays, we are so used to technology that we end up using communicators to talk to the people who sit at the tables beside us.

We become digital. This is a late finding.

The technology has impacted the relationship with customers, marketing, advertising (who would have thought Google AdWords would be the giant it is today), as well as our friendships and personal relationships.

In addition, we can conclude that the technology has influenced and changed even the stages of the sale.

Be it an e-commerce, in which all the stages are online or a small company signing contracts outside its state because it is expanding its portfolio of customers over the Internet.

We have new sales processes and technologies with the internet. The prospecting can be online or offline a presentation can be by a meeting via Skype and a contract can be signed by digital signature or in the old patterns and sent by e-mail.

But the question that remains at the end of all this is: how far does all this go together?

How far do technology and sales complement each other and go together?

The world of sales before technology

We can go back about 50 years, where the credit card was the famous passbook and the sales controls were all manual: cash control, savings, investments, in short, everything was manual.

Imagine you without your computer, without your cell phone, without your technological devices. Without the e-mails. Everything would change. People sold door to door. They were the famous travelling salesmen, who only had this sales method.

The market a salesman could operate was directly proportional to the space he could walk through.

Without a phone without e-mail, without a cell phone, the market was small and the salesman, in order to maximize his profit, varied in the products he sold.

As we can see, not everything was roses before the technology in sales was elaborated as we know it today. Imagine having to get in touch with your customer without a phone and on foot…

Today, we have numerous technological devices to help us improve our interaction with customers and increase our performance as vendors.

But the question that remains is: will the technology that so many help us, does not hinder us from time to time?

We no longer see ourselves without the technology in our lives. Spending 1 day without internet and phone can simply be a real nightmare.

But what does this have to do with the sales force, or your performance as a salesman, you must be wondering?