Salespeople at companies I have worked for: Scientologists, cokeheads, pathological liars, a fuckface who rang a cowbell each time a deal closed, a lady who loudly worried about the state of her “ta-tas” prior to meeting clients, and one guy so creepy I think about him each time I hear of a string of Craigslist hooker murders.

No, they weren’t all that bad, but the goal of having an in-house staff of highly professional salespeople at every single business is likely unrealistic. Could this department be reimagined, perhaps outsourced, even Uberized?

In a Wall Street Journal article, Christopher Mims writes about the growing momentum of sales as a contingent position, a potential further fractionalization of the job pool. The opening:

Right now a college student in Sweden—let’s call him Sven—has a rather unusual summer job. He’s in sales, but he hasn’t met anyone from the company whose products he pushes.

His boss is an app. It considers Sven’s strengths and weaknesses as a salesman, matches him with goods from any of a dozen brands, and plots a route through Stockholm optimized to include as many potential customers as possible in the time allotted to him.

The app is like Uber, but for a sales force. It has many of the same dynamics: Companies can use it to get salespeople on demand, and those salespeople choose when to work and which assignments to accept. The startup behind it, Universal Avenue, calls the idea “sales as a service.”

While the Stockholm-based company may be pioneering this model of it, outsourcing functions traditionally considered integral to a business is a trend that’s gaining steam with certain types of companies.

Anyone who needs to put salespeople in front of potential customers who aren’t otherwise economical to reach can do so, it seems, by combining the magic of a remote workforce and fractional employment.•