• The Find: One sales expert argues that the recession and the attendant lull in customer orders is bringing to light a long brewing crisis in salesmanship.
• The Source: Grant Cardone, entrepreneur and author of Sell to Survive, writing on the Huffington Post.
  

The Takeaway: Cardone, as a sales professional, has a unique take on the current economic mess; he sees it not through the lens of screw-ups in finance, but instead asks how the sales department contributed to the mess. His answer: what sales department? According to Cardone, selling is an art form in decline.

In the 50s, 60s and 70s, virtually every company had a sales force that were required and depended on things like; prospecting- the creation of customers, product knowledge, application knowledge and selling skills. Great companies were built on great sales teams who were responsible for creating opportunities not for just selling them.... In the 90s sales teams were deemed to expensive to maintain, inefficient, difficult to manage and the responsibility for driving revenues shifted to the marketing department. The theory was that the company could create demand for products and services through advertising, promotion and gimmicks then the company could merely harvest the flood of incoming orders with call centers or order desks.

So what's Cardone's problem with this shift from active sales to a focus on marketing? In brief, how to deal with a situation like the one we're currently in when tough economic times make customers largely immune to marketing and the call centers are filled with a depressing silence. Companies like WaMu, Sears and Circuit City, according to Cardone, grew too dependent on marketing and "marketing without a trained sales team is a ‘one way' vehicle, causing the company to only activate at the point of marketing and then become passive at the point of creating an opportunity." If the customers don't come to you, there's no one left to go out there and round some up, leading Cardone to conclude with a rousing call for a return to sales fundamentals.

For much more on sales, check out the very feisty voices over on BNET's own Sales Machine blog.

The Question: Do you agree that many companies have underinvested in their sales departments?

(Image of Death of a Salesman poster by Howdy, I'm H. Michael Karshis, CC 2.0)

Source:By Jessica Stillman