Written by Christian Maurer (& Friends)

This is a recurring topic, often leading to heated and controversial debates. Many of these debates could be more constructive if those voicing their opinions would specify their point of observation and the perimeters observed.

The first clarification needed is about the perimeters observed, in other words, what we mean by “Professional Selling.”

Possible definitions could be:

• All the people classified in sales and sales related occupations in the Employment Projections Program 2008-2018 (EPP) from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics or similar other national statistics.

• All the people receiving compensation for helping people in their buying process.

Discussing the question in such broad terms is difficult as trends are averaged out, leading to generalizations which can easily be put in question when discussing the topic at a lower level of granularity: For example …

• Some people might want to distinguish between B2C and B2B sales situations.

• As an alternative, EPP classifications such as ‘retail sales,” ‘sales representatives services,’ ‘sales representative wholesales and manufacturing’ might be used.

• Others might argue that the industry for which people are selling within has to be taken into consideration. This point of view might be important to understand changes in the regulatory environment (e.g. pharmaceutical industry).

• Yet others might want to differentiate between transactional and complex sales situations.

Positions taken in discussing the question are also influenced by the point of observation: For example, someone holding a particular professional sales occupation might be more inclined to deny an unfavorable trend mentioned by someone having a more detached external view. This is then often the point where the battles with statistics arise, with the aim of having a more objective discussion. Yet, it is usually fairly easy to find statistics “proving” a certain point of view. Very often the above discussed level of aggregation is though ignored and such discussions became polemic again. Statistics based on opinion polls are the worst – sharing the opinion of the majority does not necessarily make a certain trend truer.
 

In an attempt to have a more objective discussion on the topic, three major qualitative trends will be described to then derive possible implications on  the future of professional selling. You, the reader, can then decide whether the trend described is applicable to your situation. If this is affirmative, then one can decide separately whether one agrees with the derived implications for a particular situation. The question to ask is though not whether trends and implications are right or wrong – rather, the discussion should be whether they are applicable or not and the reasons why……

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