I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter recently in articles, blog posts, and conversations about “Sales 2.0″ and how the automation and “socializing” of the sales process is accelerating sales cycles, making sales people more efficient, improving close ratios, etc.

This sounds great but – How are these processes benefiting the customer and nurturing the relationship between the prospect and seller?

The answer is sadly – very little.

Sales 2.0 does not change what sales people do.

Sales 2.0 help make sales people more efficient while allowing management to better monitor what is going on within their organizations. These are not unimportant, but the crucial piece that is being missed is what is desperately needed across all businesses today – the Human element of the sales process.

Let’s step back from the Sales 2.0 discussion and focus on actual sales humans. Imagine an average salesperson that is tasked with cold calling, blind emailing prospects, attending industry conferences and networking events to drum up new business for a technology company. This salesperson calls, emails, and schmoozes his/her way around town but every time a prospect picks up the phone, reads their email, or sees them walk into the room – the prospect cringes with disdain. This is the reality with the majority of sales interactions in the U.S.

How do we change this?

Let’s lose the term ‘Sales’ altogether. Really? Yes! Instead, think about what matters most in a business (or personal) interaction – the Relationship.
Focus on the key components of a Relationship Manager. Here are a few important ones:

1) Educate don’t Evangelize - The time for convincing someone that you have the latest and greatest is over. Instead educate yourself on your prospect/clients’ business, their needs, hopes, and dreams. In turn, you can educate your prospect/client on your product and/or service as it might fit toward their needs (based on what you’ve learned and not on what you think they need driven by your sales or call quota).

2) Advise don’t Aggress – Become a trusted adviser and advocate for your customer. Instead of utilizing scare tactics & disturbing questions , build trust and value with them. If your solution isn’t the best fit for the organization, be honest and say so. That honesty will pay you back ten fold in the long run.

and for Sales Management

3) Mentor don’t Manage – Instead of managing your sales staff by spreadsheet or Salesforce reports, trying fostering relationship building behavior with your team and mentor them toward its ultimate goal of respect and trust. Additionally, all Sales Management should be building their own relationships and helping to expand the relationships of their team. If your Sales Management is spending the majority of their time managing internal processes, you need to take a closer look at how that is benefiting the relationships with your customers/prospects.

Don’t get me wrong, there are amazing, talented, thoughtful sales people out there. Unfortunately, they are still the minority. Take a closer look within your organization and evaluate how your sales people, processes, and management are effecting your prospects and customers. Are they building relationships or perpetuating negative stereotypes? If the later, it may be time to re-humanize.