If you think back on the days of door-to-door salesmen with nostalgia, we have bad news: those days are gone. Times are changing. Fast. These days, the buying process is completely different for consumer and sales rep alike.
In 2011, Gartner made a bold claim: “by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.” Personally, I’m not sure we’ll be quite there within the next three years, but when you compare the level of human interaction now versus ten years ago, it throws into perspective how comfortable we’ve become with the idea of a fully automated world.