Conclusion

At long last, he mentions something that was obvious long before: that selling a service and selling a product are not all that different. We are selling a promise of benefits to a customer, whether the benefits are achieved by using a physical object that you purchased or hiring others to perform the same service for you.

He also mentions some of the things that are changing:

• Communication technology is changing the way people interact with one another, and as salesmanship is about interacting with people, technology is changing the way we sell.
• Customers are much better informed than in ages past, and are able to learn much about you that was once difficult to obtain. A lot of the old sales tricks were based on an uninformed customer with little access to information.
• The fact that people communicate about their experiences online is a major opportunity for you to succeed or fail - the consequences of your actions will be amplified greatly
• Product technology is also rapidly evolving. It's a lot more work to become an expert in your products and how they compare to competitors than it used to be, and your knowledge becomes stale fast.

The author then does a quick review of the skills and methods that are still valid: to ask questions, discover the client's needs, help them solve their problems, and support them after the sale. This is no less true today than it was fifty or a hundred years ago.