Amen Gerhard. Well said!

Gerhard, thank you for the continuation of this fascinating story. Some time a go, I tried to get a facsimile copy of the PRIMER. Do you have a source where one could get one foe a reasonable price?

Thank you Gerhard for this excellent post reminding us about the roots of modern selling. I particularly like Patterson's concept of selling a need, not a product. In essence he educated his customers' customers about the usefulness of a receipt. I think today one would call this pull marketing. Too bad that many modern marketers have forgotten this important lesson and try to push products or solutions. Patterson's ideas are as relevant as ever. Jeffrey Gitomers's book "The Patterson Principles of Selling" illustrates this very well.

What a nice metaphor sales ophthalmologist Skip Anderson. You have devised a nice little diagnostic tool to test for sales nearsightedness or farsightedness. Taking the test will determine whether a sales person needs help by sales spectacles to get the full picture. I am looking forward to read a post from you how sales spectacles look like. Christian

Jill, I like your warning that those leaders betting on technology alone will end up disappointed. With respect to your recommended remedies, I tend to agree with Jonathan Farrington. The days where you outsource the training of your people are probably gone. Sales Leaders will have to do more on their own and they better spend their scarce training budget left on getting help for themselves. For many sales managers this will though be a paradigm shift. To transition from manager to leader, they will have to put less emphasis on the outcome oriented part of their "sales force control system" and pay more attention to the behavioral aspects Christian

The trend towards a bipolar sales world will continue. Transactional field salespeople will struggle to prove their added value compared to other channels. Strategic, relationship oriented salespeople will continue to prosper if they approach selling from an attitude of contribution and service to the customer. They will have the credibility and trust to provide value to customers buy facilitating the buying process.

Wow, what a long laundry list. I agree they all can be show stoppers.

Gerhard, I fully agree. Sellers should facilitate the customers' buying processes. To be able to do so, they must understand and adapt to how the customers want to buy. Christian Maurer Sales Effectiveness Consultant, Trainer and Coach

Gerhard, thank you for the excellent overview. Just an anecdote about the term 'sales enablement'. I do not know about your spell checker, but all the ones I use do not recognize the word 'enablement'. I therefore looked in several dictionaries and could not find the word there either. However one can find a definition of the term on Wikipedia. This probably illustrates the newness of the term, but not necessarily of the concept. More serious to your question does sales enablement have a future? I believe yes. But only if an organization is ready and mature to put this technology to good use. Sales enablement is first a process and a discipline supported by adequate technology. It has happened with SFA, and CRM though that the technology vendors claim to be the total solution. As we all know though throwing only technology at a probelm does not solve it. For sales enablement to be successful, it takes two, marketing and sales. They must be aligned. In my experience establishing a common understanding of the customer buying process has proven a good starting point to get to this alignment.

David, thank you for taking the time to look at my paper and the very helpful comments

David, thanks for the good advise. I am struggling a bit whether I write e-Books or White Papers. I called my first one on Sales 2.O an Executive Briefing Paper. Going by the format you suggest, I clearly wrote a white paper. I though also promoted it as an e-Book on this site http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=6253 Wonder what your thoughts are on this.

Interesting analysis. Was hoping to find an answer for how to fill the void of a definitive industry standard for selling. I even went through he down loadable article but did not see anything to this effect. Hard working and sticking to the guns does not seem to be the solution to me.

Problem is that it is the sleazy ones that keep the stereotype for the whole profession alive.

Jeff, I like your new rules and I like your blog. I would like to subscribe to it buy e-mail but did not find an option to do so on the blog. -Christian