A few major disruptions have recently occurred in the technology and business world,

• Cloud computing has emerged to become the most dramatic technology evolution in the past 20 years since when the internet first emerged in the 90’s. At it's core, one of the main benefits cloud provides businesses is the ability to deliver "business outcomes" to Business Managers.
• The internet and cloud have teamed up to cause the demise of the traditional marketing and sales playbook where “interrupting” prospects is (was) the name of the game. Today the buyer is now in control of the sales process known as the buyers’ journey, 1. awareness, 2. consideration 3. decision. Marketing and sales is now executed in the digital world and according to IDC, 65% of B2B buyers have already researched and made a purchase decision before they contact a sales rep.
• Technology purchases have moved out of the IT department to the Business Managers of an organization. According to Forrester 65% of new technology decisions are made by Line of Business Managers looking for cloud-based solutions to help achieve their desired business outcomes. Cloud Solutions Providers (CSP) are taking the lead in providing cloud-based business outcomes solutions to these Business Managers.

Say what? Yes, that's not a typo. Is marketing and selling Business2Business becoming more Educator2Persona? B2B is where a business has a widget well designed (hopefully) for the needs of another business and the marketing and sales goes something like this - go find the target business, find the decision maker, influencers, evaluators etc, sell your value proposition, go through a sales process and you'll get some percentage of those deals - so a business selling to a business.

There – I said it – the IT sales rep as we know it will become extinct over time. Let me be a bit more specific here... I am referring to the expensive, bag carrying, face-to-face outside direct sales rep. Overtime they will go the way of the dinosaur - actually it's already happening.