The sale of products or services has always been associated with chatterboxes and people with a never ending power to generate illusion on buyers. Some say that ?the best salesman is the one who sells fridges to Eskimos?. Things haven?t changed, but today?s salesman must be a good listener and must take the clients into account in order to raise the number of sales. And, in this field, blogs and wikis play an increasingly important role.

Many sales are still immediate and specific. But buyers have at their disposal more and more information and they like taking their time to compare. That is why, nowadays, it’s extremely essential to know what clients think in order to advice them. Any given company must be able to get information from its clients to improve their products and services and to fulfil the requirements of customers who are more and more demanding.

So, what is blogs’ and wikis’ role in this new commercial scenario? Undoubtedly, they’ll help to share data among companies’ workers. Salesmen (and also customer services, which are never exploited as much as they should) should gather clients’ data, since they are in contact with them, and then send all that information to the directives and, above all, the innovation departments via wiki or blog (depending on the degree of organization required in each case).

This cooperation between sales people and product managers should also be applied to the dichotomy between Universities and companies. Universities and colleges have an ability to innovate that private companies, because of their lack or resources and funds, don’t enjoy. Those companies are focused on selling at all cost, as a means to carry on. This is why this dichotomy should become a pair of complements. Universities can spend more time innovating, under the supervision of the companies, who know better what clients will demand.