result if both parties use e-mail effectively. Naturally, effective writing skills are important to making e-mail work. As Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible, says, Writing skills, grammar, humor, and prose are integral in showing customers how sales-intelligent you are. 3

Whether through web sites or web-based technologies such as email, the Internet is transforming the way companies buy and sell and the way the sales consulting professions communicate. But companies should be aware of the sales traps that prevent the effective use of the Internet.

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sales trap 23:

The Internet Has Changed Selling

People say that the Internet has changed selling. The Internet may have opened up new venues for selling, but its actually just another form of direct marketing. In moving selling online, the Internet has opened up new sales opportunities and added new roles for buyers and sellers. It has also changed buying patterns, giving customers more choices. Despite these changes, virtual sales are still just trans-actional sales.

CHANGES IN SELLING

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce has changed the way businesses work with their accounts by offering new ways for accounts to connect with service providers (or manufacturers), and new ways for service providers (or manufacturers) to connect with their suppliers. B2B e-commerce shifts low-value sales to virtual channels because these channels are automated and electronic and are therefore more efficient and cheaper than personal selling. It is difficult to create value in these sales (Sales Traps 11 and 12), and the customers primary decision criterion is price.

One way sellers use the Internet to foster loyalty, boost sales, and cut costs is by using web-based extranets for major accounts. Cleveland-based Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc., added private extranets for customers. The problem that this $1.5 billion (1998) industrial parts distributor had faced was that customers had difficulty choosing from among its thousands upon thousands of different industrial parts. Selling was hard to coordinate for its 900 field salespeople and 1,400 inside salespeople because each customer had individual price agreements determined by geography, sales volume, and corporate negotiations. Therefore, a simple web catalog for all visitors wouldnt be appropriate.4 A private extranet for each customer was the solution. An extranet is a para-enterprise network that

organizations use to extend intranets to existing outside customers and suppliers. Applied Industrial Technologies extranet:

A Shows the prices for the individual company

A Allows customers to purchase products

A Allows customers to check the inventory of local branches in real time

A Allows customers to review orders from the past two years5

The extranets increase efficiency. They allow us to be more efficient, and therefore more profitable, says John Dannemiller, chairman and CEO of Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc. The extranets are also expected to allow the company to open its market to smaller accounts, whose small purchases wouldnt make a sales call by a field rep profitable.6 Interestingly, however, new customers have to go through a local branch and salesperson first. Prospects have the alternative of filling out a form on the site, which is sent to the appropriate local branch within twenty-four hours. Salespeople are expected to contact the customer within a few days.7

CHANGES IN BUYING

B2B commerce on the Internet has opened up opportunities for buyers, too, allowing them access to purchasing opportunities they didnt have in the past. Procurement processing inefficiencies are eliminated because automation is substituted for manual processing of forms. Buyers are able to find the best price, product information, and resources that are in short or excess supply faster and more easily.

One way in which B2B e-commerce benefits buyers is by giving them access to markets they wouldnt have access to otherwise. For example, buyers in the paper market, traditionally a highly