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.
Sales The Emergence of a Profession - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Gilbert's Website.
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Peter Gilbert
(Visit Peter's Website)
Peter began his sales career with Ecolab
Inc in South Africa.He spent 14 years with
the company in a variety of technical and
sales roles, with his final assignment
being as CEO of the South African
operation. He then founded the South
African affiliate of Philip Crosby
Associates, and fulfilled the role of
Sales Director for 7 years, during which
period the company became the largest TQM
consultancy in the southern hemisphere.
When the Company was bought by Proudfoot
Consulting, he assumed the role of Sales
Director for three years, before leaving
to establish Chally SA, specialising in
sales assessment and recruitment
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