According to this press release from the prominent information research company Gartner, Inc., the future of sales is that we’re all going to be doing our business through a series of animated avatars. Similar to an online roleplaying game like World of Warcraft, the author posits that in the future, all transactions will be conducted between animated representations of the buyer and seller and that sellers will have to adopt their sales tactics and research to react to the avatars, not the person behind them.

Although the premise is more than a little far fetched, the article does illustrate one point that we should all be considering as marketers. The sales and marketing industry must adapt to the needs of its customers, not vice versa. We cannot expect the customer base to adapt to our needs. If the author is correct and all sales transactions are going to be between cartoons, then we will all need to find our inner Bugs Bunny and find a way to sell to those cartoons.