Technology: a threat to salespersons?

Technology - A threat to salespersons?

October 20, 2019

In the twenty-first century, technology is part of our daily lives. As consumers, we see technology as an inexhaustible source of solutions for cooking, driving, exercising and so on. In general, technology facilitates the everyday life of consumers and tries to improve the productivity of companies. However, technology tends to replace the human labour force through robots for example. In this article, we will focus on the impact of technology on the human labour force by examining the impact of technology on the profession of a salesperson in particular.

       According to Cambridge Dictionary, a salesperson is “a person whose job is selling things in a shop or directly to customers”. In negotiation, one of the keys for selling is excellent communication skills. Traditionally, a salesperson talks in person to prospective customers but with the significant role played by technology, their working approach is changing. As a result, does technology help salespersons or does it contribute to the disappearance of their profession?

Providing an answer to this question is not that simple. First it is essential to indicate the positive impacts of technologies on the work of salespersons.

To begin with, technology improves communication by allowing two persons to lead a conversation even though they are geographically separated. Concretely, it improves the work of salespersons because they can conduct interviews with anybody, the geographical distance does not put a break on business anymore.

Furthermore, salespersons must prepare their interview, in other words they must elaborate a report about the person they are going to meet. All the information on a specific company or person can be found in the ocean of information the internet created. Salespersons do not need to go personally to the Chamber of Commerce for instance, to search for information. Consequently, they save time.

One of the key roles of salespersons is to seek new potential consumers and technology helps them to do so. Indeed, thanks to the internet they can practice what we can call “virtual market research”. It consists in contacting a range of previous selected people through social networks or emails.

Moreover, new technologies transform the work of salespersons into pleasant work because it helps them working. This is the case of tablets, which allows professionals to save time and be more productive. For instance they can have access to all their files without having to carry out a heavy briefcase as they used to years ago.

To finish, new technologies improve the quality of their work. Thanks to interactive surfaces such as touch-sensitive boards, they can animate their meetings and be more striking powerful and consequently improve their results.

      So far, technology simplifies the work approach of salespersons as well as their productivity. But technology also have its disadvantages.

We previously said that technology, and more precisely the internet, helps them to collect information about the person they are about to meet. In fact, this is an advantage offered by new technologies but it becomes a disadvantage when the information provided on the internet is unreliable, false or not updated. If salespersons are not properly informed about competition, existing substitute products or, even worse, about the members of a meeting, they will probably fall in winning a contract.

We must not forget that the hallmark of a salesperson is to communicate directly with consumers. Even though two out of three French consumers (66% precisely) said that they value human contact when buying and like to speak to sales assistants*, technology is constantly threatening the human side of business. The increasing use of digital tools in order to communicate proves it.

      To conclude, technology facilitates and creates a new working approach for salespersons. It also contributes to the continual improvement of productivity. New technologies occupy a broader place each day and we cannot avoid it. However we must be careful regarding the growing place of technology in the working place. For instance, salespersons are one of the many professions for which saving time is a priority. But will salespersons not pay the consequences of a race against time? For now, technology helps them to be more productive but looking ahead, the challenge will be to make sure that new technologies will not supersede humankind and as result, will not become a real threat to human labour force in general.

Floriane. M

*Sentence quoted from an article entitled “Les français préfèrent toujours le shopping en boutique à l'achat en ligne”, published in the French online magazine LaDepeche.fr on December 2013.