Customer Specialist Sales Doctors

I would like to argue the term “Sales executive / Sales Representative” is very much out dated and I would like to propose to call them as “Customer Specialist Sales Doctors”

When you deeply investigate the business lifecycle, you will clearly understand the whole cycle starts and ends with the customer. Each company is investing huge money on Research and Development to understand the needs of the customer and to come up with products and services that will exactly meet the demands of the customer. This paves the way for evolution of technology, invention and innovation. So in short the above three cannot stop as far as the customer exists.

After spending so much on R&D, the manufacturer develops a product that will exactly meet the requirement of a customer; even then he finds it difficult to sell his solution in the market. So now the question is what can stop a customer from buying? And if the solution is so compelling, why would a manufacturer need a sales person to sell? And should he be really called a sales person?

If the concept about selling is to create a need, educate a customer and finally convince the customer to buy, then it is completely outdated. In today’s online and Google world, the knowledge available on anything in the internet is surplus. So if you carefully watch the evolution of buying lifecycle, the customer has moved from illiterate customer to a confused customer. Thanks to the competition and the Internet

Because of competition, the benefit that customers get from one product is multiple. In simple terms, more than what he wanted. This puts him in a confused situation on what his requirements are? Rather to focus on his requirement, he is now forced to expand his requirement to avail the multiple benefits that he gets out of one product. He loses focus and he goes to the internet to find best product at better price. The internet over educates him with surplus of information. He is now completely confused. If he chooses quality, he spends more on price and if he chooses price, he lose quality. He is completely perplexed and today, this is the 

situation of most customers

This changes the responsibility of a sales person. More than sales person he needs to act as a doctor. Today’s customers are well-educated on the products and also on the benefits they get out of a product but the problem is they are very much confused on what to choose. The responsibility of a doctor is to diagnose to the root cause of the disease (Understanding the customer’s core requirement). Based on which he should suggests a product that will solve his exact problem and only then he should suggest the other benefits that may suit his need and this is why I argue the sales person should be called as Customer Specialist Sales Doctors.