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Sales The Emergence of a Profession

Written by: Peter Gilbert

Article Overview: Of all the major business disciplines, sales has remained the corporate stepchild, receiving scant or no attention from universities, business schools, senior executives and the financial press. However in the United States and Europe a small number of pioneering universities are offering degrees in Sales and the results are outstanding. The combination of traditional academic input combined with internships is producing a new breed of young salespeople who are financially savvy and equipped with high level selling skills.

Sales The Emergence of a Profession

Of all the major business disciplines, sales has remained the corporate stepchild, receiving scant or no attention from universities, business schools, senior executives and the financial press. Ironically sales, especially in the B-2-B environment, is emerging as one of the most important drivers of corporate growth and profitability. Collaborative research between Sales and Marketing Management magazine and Harvard Business School clearly highlights that, across a range of industries, there is a clear, unequivocal and consistent correlation between the quality of an organisation’s sales force and it’s growth and profitability. Once the haven for affable and personable individuals of limited intellect, the brutally competitive world of selling, now demands talented, highly skilled, financially literate, savvy individuals who are, in every sense, true professionals. Unfortunately, our research based on 80 000 executive interviews indicates that only about one in a thousand salespeople match up to the required standards articulated by their customers.

Unfortunately academic institutions are not helping. In the USA, for example, there are over 4000 colleges, and universities churning out tens of thousands of graduates annually. Two out of three of these graduates will spend at least a portion of their careers in sales. Yet only 30 or so of these colleges and universities offer a degree in sales. In South Africa, only the University of Johannesburg provides a diploma qualification in direct selling

The overall sales population will decline as incompetent salespeople, incapable of delivering value to their customers, are replaced by lower cost channels to market – the internet, distributors, value-added resellers, catalogue sales and others. Paradoxically, this is creating an increasing demand for top level salespeople, who are not only skilled in the art of selling, but highly knowledgeable about their customers’ businesses and capable of functioning as business consultants and outsourcing specialists.

As in professional sport, medicine and law, selling is becoming increasingly specialized and generalists are becoming increasingly ineffective. The mythical salesperson who can sell anything to anyone (ice cubes to Eskimoes?) is just that, a myth. The salesperson of tomorrow will be selected for their innate sales talent, their selling skills and their expertise in a specific industry. One of these days our universities and business schools will wake up to the fact that they have missed a trick, and served their customers poorly. Having a top class sales force is, in most cases, no longer an optional extra but an absolute necessity and a significant source of competitive advantage.

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Article Tags: academic institutions, business disciplines, catalogue sales, collaborative research, colleges and universities, competitive world, diploma qualification, executive interviews, growth and profitability, harvard business school, internet distributors, marketing management magazine, one in a thousand, personable individuals, s sales, savvy individuals, stepchild, true professionals, university of johannesburg, value added resellers



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Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
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