The need of Sales Training in Academic Institutions
For decades, Sales and Academia remained worlds apart and the business world did fine. But Sales is changing, Academia is out of touch, and this is bad for business and the academy. We all know that a well-staffed sales function is vital to business success. Studies reveal that 39% of B2B buyers select a vendor according to the skills of the salesperson rather than price, quality, or service features. So business schools must spend a lot of time teaching sales skills, right?
WRONG!
Take a look at the curricula of the world’s top-ranked business schools, and you might come away with the impression that sales is unimportant. Most BBA/MBA programs offer no sales-related courses at all, and those that do offer only a single course in sales management. Even at the undergraduate level of business instruction, sales courses are sparse. There is an increasing awareness among universities that they should invest in sales education. There is a growing consensus that professional sales have entered a new era, requiring skills that are scarce but teachable—and best taught in a collegiate setting.
Sounds familiar?
If you answered it as a yes in your mind, I humbly encourage you and if I may, even insist you on asking yourself and probably your core team members this question?
Have Sales taken a back seat in B-Schools compared to marketing?
Until quite recently, business education might have been perfectly justified in skipping over sales. Time was, the model salesperson was two parts personality and one part of product knowledge. The job was to carry a bag, get a foot in the door, and talk up your offering’s features and benefits. Perhaps a formal sales education couldn’t add much to that. Product knowledge was unique to a company and therefore handled by internal training. People skills weren’t considered teachable in any conventional sense. Selling was something to be learned by doing. As with riding a bicycle, you could read about it, but real knowledge came from trying, failing, and trying again.
The boom in BBA/MBA programs coincided with the rise of marketing as a discipline. Sales, in contrast, got little respect. Selling and sales management have come a long way since the days when most business school curricula were designed. There is plenty of substantial material to be taught. And we know that when it is taught in a university setting, it affects performance.
Perhaps the strongest argument for increasing the number of sales education programs is that our economy is suffering in the absence of them. In regions desperate for jobs, good sales positions go unfilled for lack of qualified applicants. Many more jobs are filled by people who are unprepared to excel at them. To acquire new talent, companies will need strong college recruiting programs, but those can take several years to build. And right now only a few thousand graduates each year have been exposed to some sales education.
As sales careers have moved beyond the days of glad-handing and door-opening, a whole realm of knowledge has come to separate the best-performing professionals from their peers.
What is needed?
A great salesperson today can assess multiple customer needs and motivations, analyze and forecast market trends, use sophisticated automation tools, and develop value-driven solutions in partnership with clients. Critical thinking, analytical skills, and the ability to negotiate have become more important than an outgoing personality.
All this suggests the outlines of a robust undergraduate program. As this subject is of great concern, it also needs to talk about how would sales training help and how would it mutually benefit the students as well as the institution. I shall continue the blog next week and cover this in details.
Ashish Mathur
Sales Coach & Speaker
I help product based businesses fill their sales process leaks to create a flawless, result driven sales process. I also train sales professionals on mastering their sales skills and become sales superstars.