The Long Tail

The concept of the Long Tail was developed by Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of The Wired magazine.  The two components of the tail are: "hits" and "niches". The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.
What does that mean to the sales process?  I have discussed my ideas with Chris Anderson, and he agrees--a salesperson needs a "hit" to get into the door, but he needs "niches" to really make sales and money.  When you call on a customer, there is what Anderson calls "latent demand" and you don't know what it is unless you ask.
Start your sales call with the reason that you're there (your "hit"), but understand that the customer needs other things that you offer and unless he knows what these other things are, he may not know that he needs them.
Once Amazon developed their system, adding an infinite number of products became possible and every new product added revenue without adding significant cost.  The same with iTunes and Google.
We will discuss the long tail in the sales world next time.