Will Sales as a profession exist when use of the telephone declines?

[XRiteMA98]

Use of telephone has NOTHING to do with sales.

I buy things on line all the time. I have Amazon prime, order things on line ALL the time. Free shipping.
Soon enough is going to be food from Amazon (Whole Foods). My local grocery has online delivery. To my door. Which is great because I can do other things with the time saved. Also this might be beneficial for elderly who cant drive etc...

Alexa is already keeping my shopping list and she is right there in the kitchen with me. Say I'm cooking and I see i'm law in canola oil. I say "Alexa put canola oil on my shopping list." She does. I could also say "Alexa order all the items on my shopping list". Done!

Based on how well amazon is doing and how many brick and mortar stores are closing their doors I'd say online sales are very popular.

So nothing to do with the phone. That's in old days, the days when Elizabeth Warren;s mother saved their family's fortune by taking a job with working in a department store by taking phone orders from people who ordered from a catalog. I don't even think these jobs exist anymore. And I really hope the catalog don't exist either (save a tree).

All you need to do is have a younger relative give you a bit of technology update.

[LMC White Collar]

nothing personal but there were a few moments in that description that gave a cringe-y feeling.

YMMV, but talking to an order-taking robot like that doesn't sound like an activity I'd like to take part in.

I have a brand preference and a price floor for cooking oils - and even if Alexa were to be able to record/adhere to these preferences, I'd rather compare items on the store's shelves rather than have them delivered to me.

[JONOV]

Originally Posted by LMC White Collar

great points made JONOV.

it's natural that someone like myself who started high school in 1989 would be drawn to the sales profession, for a decent living doing something I enjoy doing (talking to others and sharing ideas).

The "Car Vending Machines" (Carvana) I can see as being a huge disruptor, possibly putting tens of thousands of living wage earning Car Salespersons out of work.

They won't. How is it materially different than CarMax or ebay any one price store? Sure, they have supercool "showrooms." Big woop, so does the BMW dealer in my old town. Enough money is on the line that consumers will take a screenshot of their Carvana price and walk down the road to Jonov's Ford Dealership and say, "What can you do?" Carvana only sells used cars...I (might) buy a new car without driving it. But a used car? No way Jose. You have to sit in them, smell them, DRIVE them...

The thing is, that in sales you need to be cognizant if you're selling something that's easily turned into a commodity, or polishing deck chairs on the titanic.

Originally Posted by LMC White Collar

its almost as if - in the absence of margins - the sales profession becomes unnecessary and can't add to a company's bottom line.

In the absence of differentiation, not margins.

[XRiteMA98]

Originally Posted by LMC White Collar

nothing personal but there were a few moments in that description that gave a cringe-y feeling.

YMMV, but talking to an order-taking robot like that doesn't sound like an activity I'd like to take part in.

I have a brand preference and a price floor for cooking oils - and even if Alexa were to be able to record/adhere to these preferences, I'd rather compare items on the store's shelves rather than have them delivered to me.

Well, for me Alexa is still valuable even if I shop in the store because I glance at the phone at Alexa app/shopping list and i make sure I get everything on that list. Alexa can play music for me while i cook, can wake me up at a certain time, can do timers (for boiling an egg for example), can turn on and off the lights in specific rooms, can open/close the garage, can turn up and down the thermostat.

Besides, even if I dont use Alexa for shopping, I can still place an order on my grocery store's website (looking at brand and prices) and just go pick it up. I am a very busy person and this saves me tremendous time.

But I bought things online, from garage openers to tires and everything else you can think of. I also think that it's good now that on most websites the items have reviews form real customers and it happened to me many times to buy or not buy an item based on reviews. Videos also help (for example when buying clothes or purses and you want to see how it looks like on a human being). Videos are very short and informative.

Before online shopping was the shopping channel. Your argument can be made against it too. Who has time to watch it? There are people who do.

And yes, the sale profession evolves. There's customer service and always you can place an order online via chat.