Twenty five years ago I could phone my boss from a telephone box on a Friday afternoon and tell him that I was foot-canvassing an industrial estate in Hemel Hempstead. The fact that I was actually outside my home and sloping off for the weekend was easy to hide, writes Clive Jefferys, JMA Network.
I wouldn't get away with that today, but I'm older, wiser and far, far more motivated than I was then.
There would be a tracker in my company car, my mobile phone buzzing in my pocket and emails pinging on my tablet, while I complete quotes online from the driver's seat.
The mobile digital age has devolved selling from the office to the field and on the whole this is a very good thing. You can maximise your selling time face-to-face and traffic jams excepted, a sales day can be three times more productive than it was in 1991.
This brings many benefits to employers too. They can spread their sales patch far wider than before without the need for extra offices and the costs they attract.
All this personal empowerment of sales people comes at a price. Working mostly on your own demands that a salesperson must constantly self-motivate, maintain the hunger to succeed and inspire trust.
These are often the rarest commodities to find in candidates and once found companies would do well to grab them.
In this last aspect, many bosses inadvertently break the equation. Being called into the office several times a week, just for a chat, leads to more traffic time and less selling.