The growth of Amazon and eBay illustrates that businesses and consumers alike are willing to purchase what they need online rather than from a salesperson.
That trend toward online buying will continue, according to Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher of Selling Power magazine, and host of the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on July 14, 2014. “The integration of Artificial Intelligence into such websites increase the products and services that can be purchased online,” he explains.
Gschwandtner estimates that within 10 years, as much as 80 percent of the sales situations currently handled by salespeople will be handled automatically. He also believes, however, that there will continue to be a need for salespeople in the three following situations:
The customer cannot diagnose his own problem.
The customer cannot define a solution
The customer cannot calculate the ROI
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