Customers are watching budgets closer than ever. They want more information about companies and products before making a purchasing decision. They demand more reasons to purchase from you rather than your competitor. And they are placing more time restrictions on their availability for personal sales contact.

These changes in buying techniques necessitate changes in selling methods. Increasing a sales staff will no longer automatically increase sales. Such shopworn sales strategies are not the answer to today's marketing needs.

Instead, sales managers must move from a "people manager" orientation to the broader sales managing responsibility. They must perceive their loyalties as critical to all employees of the company ... Not just their salespeople.

Sales provide the incoming dollars that make an organization viable. That they be profitable sales can depend on how sales managers match customer communication needs with the appropriate contact medium. The ultimate goal must be to increase the productivity of their prime cost medium, the salesperson.

In general, manufacturing managers have learned that economic lesson. They are replacing their high-cost medium (the laborer) with a low-cost medium (the robot) in handling low-skill, repetitive activities. By doing so, they are improving the effectiveness of their operation.

Sales managers must do the same. The growing demand for sales productivity improvements requires the robotizing of a company's selling efforts. Advertising is the robotics of marketing and sales. Consistent advertising can play a productivity-building role in the selling process.

Advertising can be used to arouse initial interest, seek new prospects, educate prospects and increase recognition, acceptance and preference the brand. Smart managers will make more and better use of it.

Incorporating robotics into marketing plans will not be easy for sales managers. It requires a reevaluation of current beliefs; a possible restructuring of marketing priorities and a probable reshuffling of market communications techniques.

Sales managers who make these important changes will be on top of the times and ahead of their competition.