
Automation is making a huge effect on small companies and the workforce as an entire. However salespeople aren’t typically involved about shedding jobs to automation.
A current report on the state of retail gross sales from Raydiant, a digital signage platform for companies, discovered that solely 12% of retail gross sales professionals imagine that their jobs might be taken by robots within the coming years. In truth, solely 13% of the employees who’re nonetheless employed are at the moment anxious about their job safety as their employers emerge from COVID-19 shutdowns.
Salesperson Jobs Automation – Raydiant Survey
Principally, these numbers point out the significance of gross sales associates in a retail setting. Whatever the economic system and the expertise out there, a human contact is mostly nonetheless most popular when making an attempt to shut gross sales with prospects in individual. Even when automation is employed in different areas, gross sales associates imagine they may nonetheless be wanted to benefit from the expertise.
Raydiant CEO Bobby Marhamat mentioned in an electronic mail to Small Enterprise Tendencies, “Gross sales associates aren’t anxious about being changed they usually shouldn’t be. All through historical past, there have all the time been doom and gloom headlines about how sure employees might be changed by expertise however the actuality is, in most conditions, expertise finally ends up being mixed with human expertise to create new potentialities. That’s precisely what we are going to see right here. Gross sales associates might be empowered by expertise to create higher experiences and interact extra prospects.”
Raydiant’s report consists of responses from 500 currently-employed gross sales associates at brick-and-mortar retail areas. A few of the respondents work at massive retail chains, whereas others work at small, unbiased companies.
Along with the attention-grabbing notes about automation, the survey additionally discovered that 48% of retail employees really feel like their employer is taking their well being extraordinarily critically amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And 54.8% of consumers really feel just like the institutions the place they store are taking their well being very critically.
Whereas it’s plain that COVID-19 has made a significant impression on the retail trade, these findings present that the significance {of professional} gross sales workers could also be one factor that is still even because the trade shifts. The pandemic could trigger extra companies to shift their choices — simply as many had been already making changes because of the rise of on-line purchasing.
However people who stick round post-pandemic are nonetheless prone to make the most of gross sales professionals to create an expertise that prospects will truly bear in mind. Although a lot has been made concerning the demise of retail and the rise of automation, the concept of making a optimistic expertise is all the time necessary. And particular person gross sales associates could be a massive a part of that.
Marhamat says, “Earlier than COVID, we had been very vocal about our perception that regardless of the headlines, brick and mortar retail was not dying, it was merely evolving. COVID has hit the trade exhausting however our perception stays as robust as ever.
Good, forward-looking operators are evolving and realizing that in the event that they need to get prospects within the door, they should give them an expertise price coming leaving their home for. Clients don’t need to simply purchase merchandise, they need to have an expertise.
Properly skilled gross sales associates play a essential function in creating these in-store experiences.”
READ MORE:
See Additionally:
Rounds Raises $12 Million, Permits Video Chat with Up To 12
- Small Enterprise Statistics