RIP Willy Loman (Again)

James Ledbetter documents the plight of the American salesman:

[T]he biggest culprit in killing off sales jobs is right in front of you: the Internet. There was a lot of talk in the dot-com era, mostly positive, about "disintermediation," or creating direct connections between consumers and suppliers. Think of all the purchases you make today online that once would have been accompanied by a salesperson: a sweater, a book, a "compact disc," a small appliance or piece of electronic equipment, shares of a stock or mutual fund, airline tickets, etc. Even in my own industrymedia supported by advertisingsome ad space can be booked online, as Slate writer Seth Stevenson demonstrated in a video earlier this year. The precise impact of Internet selling on sales jobs is hard to quantify, but it's a big contributor and it's irreversible.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan