"I want to be a Salesman!"

Said no child ever. Growing up we've all heard what children want to become. Some aspire to be engineers, others want to be doctors, then there are the cool jobs like police officers, firemen, soldiers, pilots. There will even be rockstars, singers, dancers, musicians and artists. But when was the last time you heard a kid say, "I'll grow up to be a salesman!"

Most sales people I've met in my professional career never aspired to be sales persons. This is further reflected by their educational backgrounds. In the field I've seen people with commerce degrees, literature, arts, accounting/finance, economics but never anyone with a qualification which would relate to sales.

Sales seems to be the most neglected field in education as people do not want to go into sales. Selling is considered a dirty job. It has none of the glamour or glitz associated with the rest of the jobs mentioned. While I was pursuing my MBA, most of my contemporaries were pursuing majors in Finance. One of the reasons was that with Finance you were guaranteed an office job. In Sales you are expected to travel in all kinds of weather and go to all sorts of places, therefore it becomes less than desirable for most people.

I however pursued a different field. I took courses in Sales Management, Industrial Marketing and such so I could learn what selling was and how to pursue it in a rational manner. One thing that resonated with me was a quote by one of my professors. He said whenever you look at the Profit & Loss statement of a company it always starts with “Sales”. It was therefore Sales that was earning the bread for the company and everything else came afterwards. Get the Sales part right and the rest of the things will follow.

The field of Sales needs a makeover. We need to make it more desirable. More people should be pursuing degrees in this field so there are more technically astute sales persons in the market. This would benefit everyone as they would be able to maximize sales and therefore maximize profits for the company.