Sales is for Humans

Image via Wikipedia

Monday I celebrated the legacy of the great Martin Luther King Jr.by going to an afternoon movie (hey, at least I admitted it) called “Up in the Air.” I chose that film for two reasons: A) I read the book-on a plane, no less- and I wanted to see how much Hollywood would water down the sarcasm and satire of the original and B) because I have a man crush on George Clooney. Both inclinations were fully realized, although there was still a high enough concentration of corporate buffoonery for me to be entertained. Also, the screenplay was completely re-written to the point where every scene and character was new, which was a good thing, because the book didn’t bother with simple details like having a plot.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to give into the secret belief that all people who write blogs have that they really would be great film critics if given the audience. Any jack^ss with a gift for synonyms for the word “awesome” could fit that bill. I want to relate an idea in the film that struck the sales person in me as true, and if I can be so bold, important.

The basic story is about a consultant that travels 322 days a year to companies to fire people. His company wants to replace the “inefficiency of the human element of termination notification” with a web conference software and a team of inexperienced people who read from a script while informing the person that have been “let go- never say fire.” Clooney’s character is assigned to show the perky MBA architect of the system the process so she can perfect the simulations of all possible interactions into the workflow of the software. Much dark comedy ensues as she tries to get through the emotional drudgery of canning career employees from drab offices across the Midwest in winter.

Image by jimmyroq via Flickr

This is probably a stretch, but the scenes reminded me of the trend for some companies caught up in the whole Web number.zero technology transformation that are looking to completely replace their outside sales pros with a team of Generation Text (grudging credit to Jeffrey Gittomer) phone jockeys that think Facebook is the only business application necessary to run their work/life amalgam. Don’t get me wrong; I am a Sales 2.0 enthusiast of the highest order. But I firmly believe that face to face interactions will always be the best way to conduct business. Even as air travel becomes more and more unpleasant (we’re probably 5 years away from having to fly naked in hermetically sealed coffins), I think there will always be place for at least a few warm blooded individuals  in every company that can put on a suit and convince another person sign on the dotted line.

At least I hope so - because racking up frequent flier miles is fun.