One of the strangest twists that the internet has brought us in recent times is the invention of the ‘Cyber-condriac’ - aka the internet hypochondriac. These people no longer defer to the years of experience and professional expertise offered by our doctors. Instead, they come to surgeries equipped with print-outs from medical websites to sit down with their GPs to argue their own diagnosis. Patients are coming to the see the professionals and then assess their own symptoms.

If doctors are finding this new breed of patient problematic, how are our sales teams coping with the new breed of ‘information empowered’ prospect...?

If information is power, then the power has definitely shifted away from the seller to the buyer. In the good old days our sales teams could get new business appointments by using information as a weapon –

“I could show you in 30 minutes how this new service could put £10,000 on the bottom line.”

Now prospects can fire up a web browser and say to themselves –

“I can benchmark your offer along with three other competitive offerings in 20 minutes and not even have to get off my chair to meet you in reception!”

This is not good news - and it is even worse in b2c. Just think how difficult it is to sell personal finance these days. One quick visit to www.moneysupermarket.com will equip even the worst technophobe with all the information they need to get the best personal loan rate.

In a galaxy far, far away, our sales professionals could rely upon Jedi SPIN selling techniques to get in front of prospects to show them the pain they were suffering. Now a prospect is increasingly able and willing to diagnose their own pain. Thanks to the internet they now have a raft of tools at their disposal to find their own pain relief and solutions to their problems.

How many times do you take a cold call and then promptly asked the sales person to send an email to explain their offer? Not that you don’t believe the charming patter of the sales person, its just that you know you can evaluate an email and website in an objective way and then get more information about competitive offerings in an instant. You take control and manage the whole sales process – and it feels great!

Adjusting to this new world order is not easy for anyone - doctors or salespeople. Perhaps the key challenge in b2b marketing is to ensure that we are there at every turn when prospects are looking to cure their pain.

Is there a doctor in the house? Back to bitesize chunks