For almost 5 years now, I’ve encouraged my readers to embrace social networking, blogging, content creation and a variety of tools that comprise the “Social Selling” tool set.

Quite frankly, I’m starting to worry!

I’m starting to worry because there are way too many people who allow their prospects and clients to live exclusively on their computer screen with little to no “live” interaction.

From a time management perspective, technology is a Godsend.

I would say the same is true from a personal branding perspective. Case in point . . . you’ve gotten to know me through technology!

I just wonder if our relationships would benefit from hearing each other’s voices or meeting face to face every now and again?

I also wonder if at times we’ve become lazy?

We assume that our client only wants to engage us via email so we don’t bother to “take it live”.

We assume that suggesting a “getting to know you” type of phone call with someone in our social network is being overly forward.

We get approached by a prospect via email and let it stay there instead of calling them or requesting a quick conversation.

And we assume that clients and prospects don’t want to meet face to face.

How about this crazy pace everyone is running?

We very rarely take the time to slow down to really know the other person or even validate the things that are important to them.

Time Out: There are actually some people running around saying that we shouldn’t be nice in sales. 9 out of 10 times that’s nothing more than justification that the person saying it is a dick and finds it easier to dissuade you than admit to their own chronic dickiness.

Our job isn’t to be everyone’s best friend but if you combine the ability to get results with a personality that is actually enjoyable . . .  you now have a winning combination.

My personal favorite . . .

The automated customer experience!

Somewhere along the line it became acceptable to automate the customer experience to the point of robot like interactions . . .

Via automated phone systems. You know “Press one if you like  automated voice bots and press two if you still like boy bands”

Through armies of “bots” that eliminate the need for human interaction.

Time Out: I tried to run an ad on Facebook yesterday and it was rejected 3 times. I read, and reread their policy and found that they were mistaken. I tried to respond to the email they sent me and guess what? It’s one of those “do not reply” emails. WTF? Meanwhile, there’s probably some genius over at Facebook, thinking he/she/it just saved the company millions by eliminating a human. Note to Mark Zuckerberg . . . I thought you ran a SOCIAL network? 🙂

There’s a positive side to all of this . . .

The sales organizations that dedicates themselves to getting back to good old fashioned human relations skills will create a more positive customer experience.

They will take market share and these will be the companies that we all talk about simply because . . .

The rest of the world wasn’t quite human enough!

I think your clients will concur!

Your turn . . .

Do you concur? Do you think sales needs to be re humanized?

Check it out . . .

We just launched a really cool time management course “Time Management For The Aspiring Sales Rock Star”! I’ve set it up in a way that you can learn at your own pace, when your schedule allows. Please click here for all the details, pricing etc!