HIRING SALES STUDENTS

To get the most out of the best, companies are hiring more sales students. There are many people who back into sales as a career, and these people need on-the-job training and skill building. Companies like Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. (3M) want to increase the number of new salespeople who are already trained by hiring graduates who have studied sales. In fact, 3M is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to schools that are willing to teach sales skills. The College of St. Catherine in Minnesota and Tuske-gee University in Alabama are both adding sales courses with money from 3M.13 Approximately 80 percent of the Kelley School of Businesss marketing graduates take at least one sales or sales management class before they graduate. The University of Akron in Ohio reports that from 1996 to 1999, every one of its sales students was offered a job after graduation.14

ACTION POINTS

4 Seek to hire students who have taken undergraduate sales courses. They know what they are getting themselves into, which may help

reduce their failure rate. Investigate the courses a student has taken. Find out what the course methodology was and whether the statements and findings documented in the books used are based upon a particular research methodology or upon just one expert opinion (which may or may not be right).

4 Use the research-based methods of the leading sales researchers. Theres too much opinion and not enough research in sales. Take advantage of the work done by leading sales researchers to improve sales effectiveness.

SALES TRUTH 5: Academic studies may reduce hiring risk, and academic research provides validated techniques.

sales trap 6:

Either Salespeople Have It or They Dont

Are salespeople born or made?

Many people believe that theyre born.

But thats a fallacy, and if you want to get the most out of the best, dont fall into Sales Trap 6. Salespeople are developed, and it takes them time to develop.

Its easy to believe that salespeople either have it or they dont, says Dr. Rosann Spiro, former chairperson of the American Marketing Association. But the research shows that salespeople improve with practice and experience, with average performers improving the most. 15

Sales Trap 6 is common. Its in the DNA, some claim, so why bother trying to improve? However, most people who develop into top performers do so over time, rather than immediately. The suggestion that these people develop into top performers because they had it from the get-go and that they are just fulfilling their destiny is a fallacy that fails to recognize that top performers needed to develop along the way.

WHAT SALESPEOPLE DO TO IMPROVE

The Dartmouth Group has observed thousands of successful salespeople and many top performers. The common denominator among all of them was that they improved over time because they did one or more of the following:

1. Analyzed what went right or wrong on a sales call

2. Participated in company sales training programs that provided reinforcement and feedback from front-line sales managers

3. Received frequent constructive feedback from their bosses