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Monday, November 16, 2009
Why don't they teach sales at college?

"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."

 

 

 


 

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About Joseph N. DiStefano
Joseph N. DiStefano writes this blog to feed his PhillyDeals column, which is printed in the business pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Joe has worked at the Inquirer, mostly, since 1988. He has also written for Bloomberg and Gannett, authored the book Comcasted, majored in economics at Penn, and fathered six children. Reach Joe at 215-854-5194 and JoeD@phillynews.com

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