Yesterday, one of my favorite "sales resources" locations, EyesOnSales reproduced a piece that I wrote a while ago "So, what is Sales 2.0? ...Anyone?" and as I re-read it, I chuckled: Nothing unusual in that, I chuckle often, in fact I have a reputation for chuckling ....my sense of humor does not embarrass me at all. I am not inclined to imagine that just because I have been blessed with such an acute sense of humor, that anyone should be disinclined to take me seriously.
Mostly my humor is self-depreciating, but it is also my way of illustrating my complete lack of patience with the "social constipation" that has become ever more prevalent within the sales space - as we witness a seemingly unending quest to create something out of nothing, even though "nothing" was doing just fine, thank you very much.
Take "Sales 2.0″ for example: Imagine, just for a moment, if "Mr Sales 2.0″ Nigel Edelshain, had not had his epiphany when "one bright and sunny summer's day, he dreamed it all up" - where would we be?
His very simple "conclusions" really did change the selling landscape for ever - "after all, logically, the canvas that we had become so used to - so comfortable with - was already more than 2000 years old?"
It is indeed an irrefutable fact that "Now we have an entire industry based around a "phenomenon" which nobody really understands."
And what of the Sales 2.0 solutions; Sales 2.0 websites; Sales 2.0 conferences; Sales 2.0 compliance etc.?
The reality is that we would still have the superb new solutions to help us sell more efficiently - companies such as OneSource and Xobni and NetProspex and Inside View and Marketo and Vanilla Soft and Jigsaw and, and .... would still have been with us. They would have just represented natural progression, a progression that has been sustained over 2000 years without the need to explain it away with a title.
The Sales 2.0 websites would probably exist, but again without the fashionable title - I do worry how these locations and companies are going to survive after we move on to Sales 3.0 - or whatever some bright "Edelshain type" spark decides to name it. Will they magically reinvent themselves with a new URL overnight?
And what of "Le famille Gschwandtner" who have given us the hugely successful Sales 2.0 conferences? (So much more pleasurable than the west's answer to a Mecca pilgrimage, and marketed as a Dreamforce event!)
Well, knowing GG and off-spring, after almost thirty years of Selling Power, they would have found an alternative.
As you contemplate all the "what-ifs" let me give you another: What if you had to go out tomorrow and sell "Sales 2.0″ to a prospective client?
Could you?
I would really struggle .... and would they really care?