--- title: "Is the Salesperson Profession Really About to Disappear?" description: "Who is talking down the salesperson profession? Recently, a claim has been circulating among some groups that with the development of e-commerce, the salesperson profession will be replaced by e-commerce, big data, and the internet, and that salespeople will disappear in the near future. There seem to be many who hold this view, mostly representatives of emerging industries, including investment and financing circles and e-commerce circles. We know that China's market economy began with the supply and marketing era of the planned economy, and the supply and marketing department was the starting point for Chinese salespeople. With the intensification of market competition, supply and marketing evolved into marketing, and marketing further evolved into sales and market." author: "董小全" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-10-24" categories: "Dealer Operations, Distribution & Channels" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-the-salesperson-profession-really-about-to-disappear-f7e87e50/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-the-salesperson-profession-really-about-to-disappear-f7e87e50.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lBL0ZZGC5v228f3ki7R3wQ" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B8%9A%E5%8A%A1%E5%91%98%E8%BF%99%E4%B8%AA%E8%81%8C%E4%B8%9A%E7%9C%9F%E7%9A%84%E8%A6%81%E6%B6%88%E5%A4%B1%E4%BA%86%E5%90%97-f7e87e50.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-the-salesperson-profession-really-about-to-disappear-f7e87e50/" citation: "董小全. “Is the Salesperson Profession Really About to Disappear?.” New Distribution, 2017-10-24. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-the-salesperson-profession-really-about-to-disappear-f7e87e50/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Is the Salesperson Profession Really About to Disappear? > Who is talking down the salesperson profession? Recently, a claim has been circulating among some groups that with the development of e-commerce, the salesperson profession will be replaced by e-commerce, big data, and the internet, and that salespeople will disappear in the near future. There seem to be many who hold this view, mostly representatives of emerging industries, including investment and financing circles and e-commerce circles. We know that China's market economy began with the supply and marketing era of the planned economy, and the supply and marketing department was the starting point for Chinese salespeople. With the intensification of market competition, supply and marketing evolved into marketing, and marketing further evolved into sales and market. Who is talking down the salesperson profession? Recently, a claim has been circulating among some groups that with the development of e-commerce, the salesperson profession will be replaced by e-commerce, big data, and the internet, and that salespeople will disappear in the near future. There seem to be many who hold this view, mostly representatives of emerging industries, including investment and financing circles and e-commerce circles. We know that China's market economy began with the supply and marketing era of the planned economy, and the supply and marketing department was the starting point for Chinese salespeople. With the intensification of market competition, supply and marketing evolved into marketing, and marketing further evolved into sales and market. Due to China's vast territory and significant regional differences in living habits, product sales are greatly influenced by different regions, and the channel line is unprecedentedly long, from national distributors to city distributors, to various levels of dealers, distributors, wholesale departments, and then to retail terminals. Therefore, China's sales channels are the most complex and diverse in the world. In recent years, due to enterprises' increased awareness of market control, channel lines have become shorter and shorter, and the so-called flattening transformation, from manufacturer directly to dealer and then to retail terminal, has become a trend. In fact, as early as ten years ago, there was a saying that channels would die and direct sales would become the ultimate trend. But ten years have passed, and in the traditional offline sales model, dealers are still dealers, just with reduced control, and terminals are still terminals, just with many more hypermarkets in China. Has e-commerce replaced traditional channels? With the rise of e-commerce, starting in 2005, a large number of manufacturers and traders doing traditional channels started e-commerce. The successful ones became rich overnight, and then there was a rush. E-commerce seemed to become the only lifeline for corporate marketing, with no business without e-commerce. After the tide receded over 10 years, only a minority can still live on the sea. For most enterprises, e-commerce did not increase sales much, but the costs were real, and the tuition was truly paid, yet the growth for enterprises does not seem so prominent. The rise of e-commerce created a group of people who initially seized the opportunity. They obtained a large amount of initial online industry promotion resources, which was a blow to traditional enterprises. The original channels gradually split, and after the split, the water in each river decreased, the stones on the riverbed gradually exposed, and the off-season arrived, which is a torment for traditional merchants. However, e-commerce has not eliminated consumption. From the perspective of the overall social consumption structure, in 2004, e-commerce accounted for 8% of the scale, and in 2014, it accounted for 20%, but the total offline social consumption has also increased several times. It seems that it has not replaced much traditional national consumption, but has greatly increased the base of product consumption. So why do enterprises and merchants feel depressed? In fact, this is an illusion due to different perspectives. For example, when 5 people stand in a room, it feels crowded, but when 5 or even 50 people stand in a square, it seems spacious. Because the number of manufacturers has increased, and more importantly, around the merchants invisibly, there are suddenly 10 times or 100 times more e-commerce merchants selling the same products. Can you say that the diversion of business is not great? What is scary is that these merchants are invisible, intangible, have no foot traffic, only data. This is the current situation of the e-commerce era. The Ten-Year Changes of Salespeople Ten years ago, there was a saying in the marketing circle: If you want to get rich, be a salesperson; if you want to get promoted, be a salesperson. If a boss wants to train an employee, let him start as a salesperson. Starting as a salesperson is the best path to promotion. Only employees who rise from salesperson, from supervisor to manager, from manager to regional manager, and then to branch manager, can become the most core management talents of the enterprise. Therefore, many enterprises' management positions are selected from the sales line, forming an internal promotion channel. The author studied science and engineering, but within a few months of entering society, he resolutely turned to marketing, which shows that sales was still a very important position at that time. Today, under the baptism of internet thinking, it seems that thinking and technology are the only things, and sales have been relegated to the second line. Is that really the case? Ten years ago, foreign enterprise white-collar workers were the career dream of many young people. Ten years later, foreign enterprise white-collar workers have become synonymous with tradition, but the mental journey of salespeople has indeed changed. Ten years ago, entrepreneurs often said: There is no product that cannot be sold, only thinking that cannot sell. This fully describes the key role of salespeople. Now, the idea of making products to the extreme has taken root in the minds of bosses. They believe that in the internet context, as long as the product can speak loudly, then consumers across the country will hear it at the same time. Welcome to discuss your views and opinions with the author. Email: 36203400@qq.com **2017 (Third) FMCG + Internet Conference** will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme of "New Forces, New Ecology" and invite domestic **1000+ dealers, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, 100+ investment and financing institutions** to jointly explore a new chapter of cross-border integration! Click the link below to review the highlights of the first and second FMCG + Internet Conferences: [2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum]() -END- --- ## Citation metadata - Publisher: New Distribution - Author: 董小全 - Published: 2017-10-24 - Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-the-salesperson-profession-really-about-to-disappear-f7e87e50/ - Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lBL0ZZGC5v228f3ki7R3wQ ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671