“There will always, one can assume, be the need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter F. Drucker
Half a century later in 2015, how prophetic have Peter Drucker’s predictions been? Amazon is already old hat in the B2C marketing automation narrative, and Alibaba is doing the same for B2B wholesale. These giant companies have completely replaced their marketing and sales departments with efficient, market-automated websites that do all the heavy lifting for them. And the result has been skyrocketing revenue.
Marketing automation replaces sales? Surprisingly, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.
