Are artisans in trouble?
James Wright, CEO/Founder Zipline Technologies, Inc.
I spent over 22 years selling enterprise software, hardware and solutions to large companies all over the world. During this time my sales teams received thousands of hours in training on tools and how to sell to enterprise companies. My companies helped influence massive change that hoisted many companies up from laggard to champion level. As salespeople, we sold large complex products that cost millions of dollars and took years to implement via professional services and partnerships with systems integrators. We also saw a huge change in the tools we used. For example, where we used to have a pager and a notebook, things quickly changed to a cellphone and a laptop with Excel. Software tools were built by companies like Siebel and Oracle that helped manage large forecasts and could give management insights into projected deals, thus making earning predicability much more accurate. We would receive yearly training where we would fly to Las Vegas for a “sales kickoff”, and sit in rooms to learn sales techniques and how to use the latest and greatest tools. These tools have expanded to the cloud with companies like Salesforce, Google, SAP, and many many small CRM startups. The power that these tools bring to sales people is truly game changing, and the ability for companies to shift strategy mid sales cycle makes even large companies very nimble and responsive to customer needs. Now more than ever the tools are evolving with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to help pinpoint interested and potential customers. Soon, reps will know who is likely to be involved in a deal and what they want to buy even before they have their first meeting. The deal is becoming transparent for the Enterprise.
Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can also largely implement many of the solutions enjoyed by Enterprise. This begs the question therefore of how the situation looks for the startups, the individuals, the minnows entering the Pond. Who is building awesome software ideas for them?
Anyone?
Well, the world is quite different for the creative entrepreneur. For the small designer, photographer, potter, sculptor, boutique owner…the tools are almost nonexistent. These makers rely on selling their creations to make a living, and the majority of these entrepreneurs have never taken a sales training course in their lives. Why would they have? There are currently over 100 million creative entrepreneurs in the world, which is predicted to grow to 260M by 2020. This growth is due to many currently employed people looking to find additional ways to make income aka the ‘side hustle’, and the fact that automation will continually drive changes in the way human employment is distributed in the global economy. Who will survive? Who will thrive? To answer these questions directly, the ones who utilize the right tools and work hard to educate themselves in business, specifically sales. These creatives need to look for products that focus on their strengths, such as:
- Selling yourself — Keeping the personal touch with your customer. Your are your best brand exponent.
- Using tools that help you sell, and do not just provide an online marketplace.
- Tools that can automate follow up for you, while still keeping your relationship personal.
- Ways to keep your customers updated with your latest products and offerings, without annoying them.
There will be many tools coming out over the coming months that can really help this growing economic area of our society, for example checkout zipline.me. I for one am thankful that this sector will continue to grow, as I truly appreciate the unique and personal touch that artisans bring to the world. I would love nothing more than to see this area thrive and the mass consumer approach of the Amazons of the world slowly dwindle to a random purchase. Having lived in San Francisco for over 20 years, I recall a time when the streets were calm and boutiques and artists made the city a thriving community for all. Now, if you cross any part of the city on any given day you see swarms of UPS trucks out on attack to drop of the latest “convenience” Amazon package. Amazon beat Walmart at its own game, by using UPS instead of a big warehouse store to replace the small artisan and boutique.
I believe there will be a time when the creative entrepreneur will truly rise up and people will rediscover a time when the appreciation of the unique and artistry will be valued first over price and delivery time. The wave of global entrepreneurs needs to equip itself with tools that help educate, to realize that entrepreneurs themselves are the most valuable part of their business.
At Zipline we are deeply in to figuring out how to help people start up and succeed in their creative business endeavors. As such, we want to hear ideas! From our own team, and from you. I’ll be posting up ‘guest’ blogs, but since this is a place we can all talk about how to improve the options for creative entrepreneurship, it’s ours…so feel at home and don’t be a ‘guest’!
