Sales POP - Purveyors of Propserity
Dimensions of Trade: Into the Air
Blog / Sales Management / Mar 28, 2017 / Posted by Nikolaus Kimla / 7437

Dimensions of Trade: Into the Air

2 comments

Trade plays a key role in sales, and it is of great benefit for anyone engaged in any level of sales to learn the fundamentals of trade. It is also of great benefit to understand how trade has evolved–for every evolution in trade has had a profound impact on sales.

Like any endeavor, trade has evolved through time, and has passed through stages. Because each stage contributes to the current state of trade, a way to refer to each of these stages is as dimensions. Each dimension contributes and becomes a foundation for the next.

In our first Dimensions of Trade blog post we covered the first 2 dimensions of trade: the ancient trade routes–the Silk Road and the Amber Road–and the great sailing ships that finally came to prominence in the 1500s.

For our purposes, we could say that the diesel ships of modern times that succeeded the sailing ships are also part of the second dimension, but cross into the third dimension. The same could be said for the trains that came about for overland travel and freight. Both shipping and rail brought is into our third dimension of trade: flight.

The Air Age Takes Off

While it was certainly around before then, the real breakthrough in commercial flight came after World War II. A huge number of airplanes were manufactured during the war, and when it was over companies didn’t know what to do with them all. Aircraft manufacturers realized that heavy and super-heavy bomber airframes could easily be converted into commercial aircraft; these planes could be used for passengers and freight, and a whole new industry was born. As the boom in commercial flight occurred, airports also increased in number so that there would be places for these planes to land and from which to take off.

How rapidly did commercial air grow? In the year 1950, there were around 50 million people travelling by air. 40 years later it was up at around 500 million. Last year it was over 2.3 billion. Note that this has all happened in less than a lifetime.

Dimensions, Responsibility and Timeframes

As a side note, you can see how technology shortens up timeframes. The first trade dimension, the “roads”, lasted over 2,000 years. The sailing ships, at least through their prime, lasted several hundred years. The air age came about and took over in just a little over 70 years.

Interestingly, we can see that different kinds of entities were responsible for each of the different dimensions:

  • The 1st dimension trade routes–the “roads”–were brought about by the traders.
  • The 2nd dimension, sailing ships, came about and was controlled by the empires: Spanish, English, Dutch, Portuguese, and Italian.
  • The 3rd dimension, commercial air flight, has been evolved and carried forward by global corporations.

This third dimension brought about a trend which is now being perceived as a real threat to local economies: placing manufacturing and production facilities in foreign countries. Goods could be transported so fast and so cheaply, manufacturing moved into the cheapest areas of the globe for operation.

Correlation to Sales

Just as with our first and second dimensions, this third dimension has a direct correlation to sales, and in fact could not function without them.

To begin with, it was and still is salespeople that sell commercial airliners to the companies that use them. It is salespeople that sell air freight services, and salespeople that are responsible for selling each and every shipment that is made through air freight.

Examining passenger travel, tourists have one thing in common: they want to buy things. They purchase their travel. They make purchases in airports. They buy items and services at their destinations. They stay at hotels. All of these are handled by salespeople–they always have been and always will.

All the way back to the beginning, and up through today, we can see how these dimensions proudly reflect in the entrepreneurial salespeople (who I refer to as salespreneurs) of today.

 

About Author

CEO and partner of pipelinersales.com and the uptime ITechnologies, which I founded in 1994 and has since played a significant role in the development of the IT-environment. pipeliner is the most innovative sales CRM management solution on the market. Pipeliner was designed by sales professionals for sales professionals and helps close the gap between the requirements of C-level executives for transparency and the day-to-day operational needs of field and inside sales. I am also the founder and Initiator of the independent economic platform GO-AHEAD!, which orientates itself on the principles of a free marketplace in terms of liberal and social responsibility. Connecting people, the trust of business leadership in terms of values such as freedom, self-responsibility, and entrepreneurial spirit, and strengthening their awareness in order to create a dynamic boost within the economy triggered through spontaneity, all stand for the initial ideas surrounding GO-AHEAD! I studied in Los Angeles and Vienna and received my Masters's Degree in 1994. I am married and have 3 children My Specialties are in: Sales Management, Sales CRM Software, CRM Cloud Solutions, SAAS, Business Strategy, Software Development, "Pipeline Management", Social responsibility, outbound sales, b2b sales, inside sales, sales strategy, lead generation, sales process, entrepreneurship, coaching, mentoring, speaker, opportunity management, lead management, Austrian School of Economics

Author's Publications on Amazon

This is a practical manual covering the vital subject of Sales Management. I firmly believe that sales are the most important profession for dealing with today’s turbulent world and Econo my, for salespeople create wealth and produce peace. But salespeople need a competent, stable leader—and…
Buy on Amazon
Inside this eBook, you’ll discover a series of chapters dedicated to some of the most important areas facing sales today. From the sales process definition to measurement, lead generation, and proven sales techniques, this comprehensive eBook will provide you with the information you need to…
Buy on Amazon
A common term in sales today is EQ, which stands for “emotional I.Q.” It means the skill a salesperson has in reading emotions and utilizing them in sales. It means empathy and a number of other abilities. The short version is, it’s an I.Q. when…
Buy on Amazon
People are smart to question the future of automation, for it has become part of everything we do. With the quantity of applications and technology around us, we yet still crave more. We become convinced of its power when our package is delivered from Amazon…
Buy on Amazon
Sales management isn’t a simple subject by any means. But at the same time, it does have some basic and somewhat simple fundamentals—and that is what we are bringing to you with this book. First come pain points of sales management, and how to overcome…
Buy on Amazon
Today the Internet has transformed a seller's market into a buyer's market and author Nikolaus Kimla states that the role of sales has never been more crucial. It is now time to give salespeople the role they factually can play: entrepreneurs within the enterprise. They…
Buy on Amazon
This is our public declaration of the intentions behind Pipeliner, and our objectives and motives for the product and for our company. Behind the development of that CRM application and, in fact, behind everything we do, we have a real cause. The story begins with…
Buy on Amazon
For the future, there must be a perfect balance of humans and technology. You have to have the perfect technology, andthen the perfect human being in application, performance and presentation. Today and into the future, it’s a 50-50 balance. In the past it was perhaps…
Buy on Amazon
The salespreneur is based on the concept of the entrepreneur. Before we can explain the salespreneur, you have to have some understanding of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur plays a crucial role in any economic system. The entrepreneur seeks out information that can be utilized for…
Buy on Amazon
A seasoned captain would never leave port without a competent navigator. In a similar way, a sales manager might be a total ace at "commanding the ship" – at inspiring and coaching sales reps, pointing out and getting agreement on making quotas, and keeping everyone's…
Buy on Amazon
..
..
.
Sales Process Automation
.
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. For information on cookies and how you can disable them, visit our privacy and cookie policy.