Young industries are embracing old sales techniques. For a forthcoming book called “The Art of the Sale,” its author, Philip Delves Broughton, visited Salesforce.com, a firm that sells online sales support. He found a boiler room full of athletic-looking graduates pounding the phones. Google, while it’s built around algorithms, also has thousands of flesh-and-blood ad salespeople. Apple sells millions of units online, but its stores are as sophisticated as they are old-fashioned.

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