"Business schools worry me," Glenn Porter, vice president for sales at LMC Software in Chadds Ford, complained recently in a talk he gave at the Huntsman School of Business out at Utah State.

"You can go through a two-year (MBA) course at Harvard, Chicago, Stanford or Wharton and not be required to take one course in Sales 101," Porter complained. "IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Goldman Sachs have cut back on sales training for new hires," and "few people who run companies have ever taken a course in sales." Even as US businesses feel ill-prepared for global competition, "the basic block and tackle of how to get real business is not taught."

Porter is calling on business schools to supply the slack by boosting courses in "Salesmanship 101 - how to conduct a structured sales call, how to progress a sale through the logical selling process and how to get customers to pay their invoices in a timely manner."

Wharton does offer a sales course - half a credit, at the undergraduate level. Joseph DiAngelo, dean of the Haub business school at St. Joseph University, says his school, with its hands-on emphasis in food and drug marketing, offers two courses, in Sales Technique and Sales Management.

Why no Sales majors alongside Accounting and Finance? "It's something you learn on the job," said Villanova University's Marketing deparmtent head, Gregory Bonner. "It'd be hard to put out a major in sales. I don't think you'd have a kid take six or seven courses in sales, it's too microscopic. But within the Marketing department, we do have a sales track:" both sales, and sales management, like at St. Joe's. 

 "When people start off out of college, far more start ouf ff in sales than any other area," added Bonner, who consults for Campbells' on the side. "Kids who have had these courses have a leg up when they get out there." Maybe, he adds, "we ought to offer a third course."

»  More Why don't they teach sales at college?

  PA Gov. Rendell last week spread $23 million to 36 developers, companies and towns for solar and hot-water-well (geothermal) energy projects. List here. Funny thing though: We started calling these folks, and some of them told us they're not necessarily going to build these things:

 - A $2.55 million loan for a proposed $6.1 million SunEdison rooftop solar electric system on an office building managed by Cushman & Wakefield in Fort Washington. Rendell's office said SunEdison will build the system, but no contract has been given yet, and the system could actually be built by another company, according to a representative of APF Properties of New York, owner of the building, who spoke on condition he not be identified.  The 360,000-square-foot building, at 500 Virginia Drive, was built last year, it's owned by APF Properties of New York.  

- $1.02 milllion for a loan guarantee for developer Earth Rising Ventures Inc.'s $7.8 million, solar-heated, geothermal-cooled  ("No heating bills. No air conditioning bills") project in Kimberton Village, East Pikeland Township, including 21 condominium homes and 7,000 square feet of commercial space. For now, this is just a proposal: "Target date is a year from now. We're waiting for the financing," Earth Rising owner Dan Orzech told me. 

- A $649,000 grant toward a $2.3 million Borrego Solar Systems Inc. solar electric system at Tasty Baking Co.'s new plant in South Philadelphia. I'm double-checking this one with Tasty spokesman Chad Ramsey.

- A $459,000 loan toward an $8.2 million geothermal heat pump system at the planned Sun Center Studios, Chester Township. A deal to build the proposed $85.8 million studio is scheduled to close Dec. 15, with construction done by Labor Day, investor and Philadelphia lawyer Jeff Rotwitt of Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel told me.

Rottwitt said he's planning the complex, with "sweetening" from property tax breaks by Delaware County and Chester Upland School District, with partner Hal Katersky's Pacifica Ventures, a US-Canadian partnership that built another studio in Albequerque.  There's no actually movie production currently "in the pipeline," Rottwitt added, "but we'll have eight and a half months to market it" once building starts.

- $85,000 to Uwchlan Township, Chester County toward a $386,000 solar system at the municipal building.

»  More PA: $23M for 'clean energy' at film studio, Tastykake, builders

Amazon.com is fighting efforts by New York and other states to collect sales taxes for billions of dollars in online sales, reports Michael Mazerov of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities here.

Amazon says keeping track of who owes what is unfair and burdensome -- yet Amazon already collects state taxes on purchases from sites for Target, Macy's and other clients that charge proper state taxes, according to Mazerov.

Should Amazon pay? It's an especially relevant question for Pennsylvania, which is one of five states where "Amazon has a physical presence (including a new Hazleton warehouse that's supposed to employ over 1,000 by next year) but nonetheless doesn't collect sales tax," Mazerov told me. 

"In light of improving global economic conditions, stabilizing industry sales and its healthier cash position, GM announced today that it plans to accelerate repayment of its outstanding $6.7 billion in [U.S. Treasury] loans," General Motors reports here. 

"GM plans to repay the United States" in installments, starting with a $1 billion check in December, GM adds.  
 

James Riepe was a top boss at mutual fund giants T. Rowe Price and Vanguard Group, but for the past decade he also played a key role at Philadelphia's largest employer, the University of Pennsylvania, serving as chairman of its volunteer board of trustees during a financially turbulent period.

When he took the post, Riepe, a double-Wharton-grad, found a $200 million deficit at Penn's medical complex was threatening, as trustees believed, to pull the school under. Riepe recounts how Penn reorganized and stabilized its hospitals, brought private developers on campus to avoid costly new debt, and inadvertently outperformed Harvard, Yale and Princeton over the past year with its investments, in my PhillyDeals column in Sunday's Inquirer here.

Mayor Nutter promised to make government less onerous for small Philadelphia firms. But business owners complain getting information about permits, licenses and tax info from the Municipal Services Building remains a long, frustrating, wasteful slog.

The city's new Web page, www.phila.gov/business, set to go online today, is supposed to make it easier by listing where you have to go, whom you have to see, and what you have to do to open or expand a business. More in today's PhillyDeals print column here.

Citing "tough economic conditions," Exelon Corp.'s Peco Energy Co. unit in the Philadelphia area has cancelled its "annual 'diversity gala' held during the holiday season. Instead, more than 150 employees will spend part of their Saturday, Nov. 14, volunteering at local food banks and a suburban children’s shelter."

Peco boss Denis O'Brien also says the company'll donate $25,000 to the Philabundance poverty food bank, $10,000 each to MANNA for terminally-ill homebound Philadelphians and the Chester County Food Bank, and $5,000 each to the Sunday Breakfast Mission soup kitchen in Center City, Veterans United of North Philly, City Team Ministries of Chester, and Christ's Home for Children in Warminster.Announcement here.

Vernon W. Hill II, founder of the former Commerce Bancorp, has started advertising his new British bank, Metro Bank, with blue-and-red Commerce-style banners and a heart logo, on branch sites in middle-class London neighborhoods, reports Britain's Guardian newspaper. Story and picture here.

Metro's banner message, in a Britain weary of financial ruin: "LOVE YOUR BANK"

"Metro Bank is thought to have ambitions to launch as many as 200 branches across the country," writes the Guardian. "Hill and marketing veteran Anthony Thomson are directors the bank. Neither, though, has yet been authorised by the Financial Services Authority..."

Yet despite the global financial depression, Hill is starting Metro at a convenient time: European financial authorities are forcing Royal Bank of Scotland (owner of Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania) and Lloyds Banking Group (not affiliated with Lloyds of London) to sell off branches; the UK government has pledged to replace them with "new entrants" serving neighborhood markets.

Meanwhile, Hill's U.S. bank, a planned combination of Hill-backed Republic Bank of Philadelphia and Harrisburg's Metro Bank (formerly Commerce of Pennsylvania, an ex-affiliate of Commerce Bancorp), faces delays from government regulators who are scrambling to close troubled banks, not help new ones.

But Hill's still putting his old band back together. Robert B. Worley is the latest ex-Commerce Bancorp manager to join Republic First since Hill got involved last year. This week Worley joined the company as Senior Vice President and Market Manager for New Jersey, after quitting a job as Washington, DC Market President for TD Bank of Toronto, which acquired Worley's services when it bought Commerce two years ago.

Worley's NJ cred: He was for 14 years head of Commerce's key Burlington County market. Earlier Republic hires of TD's Commerce veterans here and here.

 

»  More 'Love Your Bank', Vernon Hill tells UK; new raid on TD Bank

Philadelphia Planning Commission meets Tuesday Nov. 17, 1 pm, upstairs at 1515 Arch, like it does most months. Agenda here. Some highlights:

- Northeast Philly: (A) Amended master plan for Fox Chase Cancer Center. (B) Plans to give city property at 5201 Frankford Ave. to Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development (PAID) for a private owner.

- Northwest Philly: Updates on plans for Chestnut Hill College expansion

- North Philly: (A) Updates on plans for Exton developer Hankin Group's Cameron Square at 19th and Wylie, Francisville. (B) Nicetown blight recertification so the Redevelopment Authority can keep those public dollars flowing. (C) Transfers of the Philadelphia School District ground between 15th and 16th, Susquehanna to Diamond, to the PAID, for a private owner.

- West Philly: (A) Construction deal for a Lucien E. Blackwell Community Center, 47th and Aspen, with the Philadelphia Housing Authority. (B) Rezoning for the chunk of West Philly between 48th and 49th, Market up to Haverford