Helping Salesmen Coddle Customers Is a Promising Software Play

The other day I drank lunch with a table full of salesmen who, in between rounds of Coors and loud, raunchy stories, basically kept working. Cell phones in hand, they made and took calls, structured deals, passed on jokes and generally schmoozed as effectively as if they'd spent the day in face-to-face meetings. The cell phone, clearly, has revolutionized the way they do their thing.

But this is kid stuff compared to what's coming. Say you're one of the salesman at last week's lunch, and a customer calls with a question about his account. With today's technology, you'll answer as best you can, based on your knowledge of the subject and whatever printouts happen to be in your briefcase. Then you'll chat a little, pulling a joke or two from your repertoire or asking from memory about the client's interests.

But a year from now that same call might activate a handheld display of the customer's recent account activity, names of kids, spouse and hobbies, and jokes you've bookmarked for him, along with links to the company database that let you answer virtually any product-related question. Scroll down a little further and you might find a special deal that the system's "decision engine" thinks the customer -- based on his profile and the behavior of similar customers in the past -- is likely to find attractive. So you make the offer, and maybe close the sale. The result: A client who's convinced he's on his rep's front burner, and a salesman with tools that make him feel like Superman. ...