David Brooks  14.01.2016

Is email correspondence an adequate alternative to telephone contact  or  a sales visit?

There are some interesting pointers to economic and sales activity which some suggest give indicators of how good, or bad things are. Let me give some examples. The number of cranes on the  skyline might serve as a simple indicator of construction activity which in turn is a measure that the economy is on the up. Walk into a business premises and there are plenty of indicators of how successful is the business. In a typical manufacturing business, say, a walk through the warehouse can often give the game away by looking at the carton labels (and dust) to get the idea of how quickly, or not, the stock is moving. Have a look at the company's leading products - are there any on the shelves, are there too many? What about the sales office, are the phones busy? Or is everyone typing emails?

A few years, well decades ago, the electrical manufacturing business I worked for had a large team of salesmen 'on the road' and a culture of sales that pervaded all areas of the business including R&D and production. Both the research labs and production lines were used as sales assets with customers invited to see have clever we were. But the front line sales people were the people who really closed business and importantly got inside the customer company and opened up other sales opportunities. In some internal sales offices the telesales teams were recruited for their persuasive sales skills where the value did not justify a face to face sales call. 

So the question is can selling by exchange of emails be as effective with no real sales relationship to build trust and confidence? There is restricted scope for really understanding what the customer actually needs and introducing alternate or additional products. In fact it doesn't really do much more than a basic web site and leaving it entirely to the customer to conclude the sales journey themselves.



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