marketplace

Will cubicles be a distant memory for today's workforce? Will the expense of office space and the tremendous burden of employee benefits be a thing of the past for modern day businesses?

Not long ago, industry pundits were touting B2B marketplaces or exchanges as Internet era panacea for productivity and cost- cutting problems of corporate world. Buoyed by excessive investor interest and driven by a desire to cash in on the enormous dot-com valuations of late 90s, marketplaces were sprouting like autumn mushrooms. With the collapse of stock market, it did not take much time for burgeoning B2B marketplaces to come to a screeching halt!

In today's hypercompetitive marketplace, long gone are the days of mere prospecting and crafty (and often misleading) sales tactics using 1,001 approaches to "close the deal." Due to the information revolution, prospects are now more informed, more educated, and incredibly more sophisticated than ever before. Using a plethora of techniques such as these are no longer effective -- or in the very least, they are not as effective as they used to be.

I am selling in a highly competitive marketplace. My biggest challenge in prospecting is creating interest and getting the appointment, since we really do not offer anything that is special or more beneficial than our competitors.