The end of traditional sales and marketing

Jeff's posts about the traditional entreprise software business model being broken on Larry Augustin's piece:

"The Open Source model turns the marketing problem on its head. Customers can look at, evaluate and review software without contacting the company that will sell it to them. [...] The customer says, "I want something like that." He locates the Open Source version of the product, downloads it and is using it before the company is involved. [...] the Open Source solution, the CIO is happy with the software. But after using it for a while, begins to wish for documentation, a live-person to ask questions, a phone number for support, and so on. At that point, the customer calls the company saying, "I've been using your product for a year and now I need your help."

I think it is not just open-source. It happens to me very often when potential customers tell me they have been reading my blog for some time and want to do a business deal. The deal usually happens very fast after because trust already exists. 350 participants from 30+ countries will join the Les Blogs conference in three weeks without a single email or worse paper invitation being sent and many potential sponsors contact us.

I think it is the entire sales and marketing process which is broken, not just for software. Build the trust, share your products, your ideas, what you do and as much as you can first, then the sales will happen. Don't you think ?