It was Henry Ford, who went on to popularise the car that said

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

What he meant was that the common mode of transport was the horse and nobody thought there could be different forms of transport, there was the horse, that was it.

In 1894 the Times predicted that “in 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of horse manure.”  Of course it's not and never was as people had moved to use cars rather than horses.

So what about the Sony Walkman?

When it came to researching and manufacturing the Sony Walkman, the feedback to Sony was

 "why would Listen to music on the move, I listen to music at home".

At the time, people listened to physical music, vinyl, CDs and cassettes, the players were at home.

Of course, now it is normal to think that listening to music from mobile phone and a streaming service is normal.  Many of us with have a streaming service and in fact many people listen to music from a mobile device and we don't have a record player.  This is how things change.

The same has happened to sales and marketing

In the past, cold calling and email marketing was as as "normal", of course with failure rates of 99% for cold calling and 98% for email marketing, no wonder people are switching to social selling.

As the car left the horse behind, so was the cassette left behind for streaming.  

The same can be said for cold calling and spam email, isn't time you didn't get left behind? 

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.