Next Tuesday I Will Reveal the Future

In the post "The Future of B2B: Like It or Not", I predict how the world of sales will change in the next ten years. I only do this every ten years, so you'll definitely want to check it out. To whet your appetite, here are the five predictions I made ten years ago:

• Companies will gravitate towards hybrid B2B business models that combine offline and online sales methodologies.
• Companies will use the Internet to generate sales leads and help salespeople to sell rather than to close business without a sales rep.
• Companies will learn to provide their sales people not just with information, but with the right information at the right time.
• Companies will assume that customers and salespeople alike can retrieve a wealth of information, regardless of where they're located.
• The sales force of the future will have a skill set that emphasizes consulting and the ability to marshal the resources to solve real customer problems.

It didn't work out that way, though. I was right and they were wrong. Even so, when I made those predictions in 2000, plenty of people said I was "full of it." And they added two extra letters to the "it."

But consider for a minute. If you had read that article, and made career moves based upon those predictions, where do you think you'd be today? Chance are you've already adapted, but if you had gotten a couple of years ahead of the curve you'd have gotten there a lot more quickly and have made more money as a consequence.

I'm point that out not to impress you, but to impress upon you that it's never too soon to prepare for the future. So check out next Tuesday morning's post. You won't regret it.