The traditional corporate model places a high premium on sales. In fact, industry sectors sometimes complain that salesmen and women push systems and merchandise that haven’t been created yet. The favourite Dilbert commercial shows the hapless IT guy complaining to a sales guy, “you sold a system that won’t be invented for the next two years! What do you think that means?” The sales guy replies, “it means that I’m a fantastic salesman and you are a terrible engineer!”

Where this is the case, the company’s reputation is at risk. As competition heats up and the rush to force early systems adoption slows down, even monoliths like Microsoft begin to emphasise compatibility. This means that the sales guy that promises a product not yet on the market will be known as a hack rather than a hot-shot.

Salespeople (like politicians) are quickly becoming the menace of the marketing world when they promise products that don’t deliver. Online, the social media results of these transactions can unravel expensive and carefully planned marketing campaigns. Consumers go to the web to vet a potential purchase–this goes for individual shoppers as well as corporate customers. Complaints and compliments are out there online. They are accessible, accessed, and more and more used in assessing a potential purchase.

This is where marketers salvage the purchasing power that many over-enthusiastic salespersons spin out of control. Marketers collect the complaints and the compliments, pinpoint the issues, and repackage the relevant information where clients and customers can access it–without suffering the innate suspicion experienced by any person undergoing a sales routine. Marketers online have renewed power, if they have the technology and skill to access it.