Originally published on October 15, 2009:

This is one way social media has changed the sales process.

Traditional corporate sales forces are hired for their industry expertise. A product or service that targets the hospitality industry will seek account executives with that background. But suppose the company realizes that its service is a better fit for the financial industry. The problem is the domain expertise and social networks of hospitality industry AEs won’t transition to banks. That, in essence, is why corporations can’t react swiftly. Shifting sales and marketing focus is a common problem for companies big and small, especially internet companies. And the key to transaction execution is the direct channel between the AE and the client.

Social media has changed the sales process so that the key to the transaction may not reside in the AE / client channel, it’s finding the special intermediaries who can facilitate the transaction. Before social media, those intermediaries were hidden inside industry tubes that outsiders couldn’t penetrate. Social media (