Gerhard gschwandtner wiki

Gerhard has a way of looking at the past and present to extrapolate the future. He has his finger on the pulse of what is happening in sales. The focus of our interview was on the impact that the “transformational” and “revolutionary” buying patterns of customers have had on sales today.

Gerhard described how many sales organizations have simply not been able to keep up with the significant changes in how today’s customers are buying.

He attributed the impetus for the change in customer buying patterns to the internet so much so that the internet has become a  “competitional platform” for all business processes including the sales process.

The big change in how customers buy began when customers could educate themselves online (Aberdeen says that by the time a prospect is ready to talk to a salesperson the prospect has gone through 60% to 70% of the steps needed to make a decision) and only accelerated as buyers used the internet to talk to each other to rate providers and