How important is it to be ‘closer’ to customers or prospects?

Recently I came across an amazing service called Flowtown. According to the company blurb "When all you have are email addresses, Flowtown can show you all the different social networks your customers are on including: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and more!" Services like these are taking the virtual world to next level. These are helping marketers and sales managers in connecting better with their prospects and customers.

The online world has seen a major change with virtual meetings, emails, voice chats, messengers and social media. The need for face-to-face meetings is considerably reducing. I have myself been part of teams operating from one part of the world and serving customer base worldwide.

However, on the other end, last year when the Harvard Business Review conducted a global study that included over 2000 businesses, over 95% of the respondents judged in-person meetings to be critical to building long-term business relationships.

So what are we seeing here? On one hand, there are success stories of people have not seen a human being for months and have still managed to acquire and retain customers while on the other hand, there are entrepreneurs, business owners still believe in need of face to face meetings.

So what does it depend on? Does it depend on your audience- Tech-savvy or no-tech-savvy? Does it depend on whether you are selling product or service? Does price or cost play a role?

I am keen to know your thoughts.