Sales occupations will grow by 5% by 2024. Whenever you are looking to hire someone for your sales team, the chances are you look at the person’s education. You want to know what they’re made of. But rarely will you see anyone with an actual sales degree. Ask around the office and it’s highly unlikely that anyone will have any form of sales degree.
Stop one moment and ask yourself why this is the case. There are actually a number of compelling reasons why a sales degree has no place in the classroom, and this article is going to explain why.
A Bad Stereotype
In many circles, salespeople still have a negative stereotype. Many see them as individuals who promote the idea of using any means necessary to close a sale. They will use hype and lies just to get someone to buy something. Schools don’t want to be associated with that and they are certainly not going to offer a degree in it.
The reason behind this lies in the negative experiences many have experienced when buying something. This is nearly always in the B2C sector, and it tends to involve a telemarketer or a used car salesperson. The reality is most salespeople are honest and they do things by the book.
Selling Skills Can’t Be Learned in School
As brutal as it sounds, selling skills cannot be learned in the classroom. The sales skills you learn in one company won’t be relevant in another because the product is different and the way of doing things is different. Then you have the huge differences between B2B businesses and B2C businesses.
No classroom course can teach you to deal with a specific executive. No course can teach you how to get an executive to spend a lot of money.
What’s Relevant?
There are many industries where information changes all the time. But nothing changes faster than the sales industry. If you are out of the game for six months, you suddenly discover that you are completely behind the times and people aren’t responding to your tactics.
Consider the fact that the average degree may last three or four years and you have a situation where the curriculum would have to change following every generation of students. And even that one generation of students would be behind the times when they go to work.
Experience Not Knowledge
Degrees are designed to teach you to be successful. The problem is that in most companies this doesn’t mean a thing. They are not interested in what you know because it doesn’t necessarily translate into making an actual sale. What really matters is experience. The results that you gained at one company will influence whether you get a job at the next company, not what degree you happen to hold.
In a business where results are everything, there’s little a classroom education can actually do to prepare you for the real sales world.
Your Manager
This next problem exists in many industries, but it exists even more so in the sales world. When you enter a company, a manager will tell you exactly how things work, and you will be expected to deal with that. They will train you in how to do things.
In other words, the moment you enter a company you are going to be told that what you knew before means nothing. You are going to be tutored in the ways of that specific company. It’s often easier for an organization to take on a blank slate than someone who holds a degree in sales because then they don’t have to unlearn everything they knew before.
So What Do Businesses Look for?
It may seem that education isn’t important in sales, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Businesses do want you to have a good education. But they want this education to demonstrate that you have the soft skills that make a good salesperson. It’s why they will look for people with business degrees, English literature degrees, and psychology degrees.
They have the skills to be successful, but the company has a chance to train and mold them in the correct image. These students are far easier to work with.
Degrees in Sales
A sales degree is an uncommon object in the education system. Regardless of the reasons given above, the chances are schools will begin to offer more sales degrees in the coming years. To put it simply, there’s a growing appeal for them, even if they won’t necessarily lead to guaranteed jobs at the end of it.
AJ Agrawal
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Just want to add a comment. While searching for a job, we are all asking to our network, looking for job search engines and we are searching a place according to our experiences. What about our personality? Will you fit into that environment? No one is asking how to land your perfect job. Isn’t it weird?
Like your sales example. How a person understand that he can be a perfect salesman?
Actually, currently SuperCV is working on it. Maybe you want to check out, totally up to you.
But why people feel saleman has to lie? I think people from a good company always try to tell truth, but not cheat in order to get sales. I think there is certain prejudice for sales people.
A great article. It explains why it’s always recommendable to look for a special education opportunity in your area instead of studying what everybody else does – on an average university. I chose to be a HR specialist, in German also called “HR Fachfrau”, and I certainly don’t regret it. I studied in Zurich, and it was an awesome time. Not only the city is gorgeous but education was enriching and helped me to find a great job afterwards. But still what the author said is true – you can only learn selling skills by real experience, not by sitting in the class room!
Selling is the most important point for a business, but school selling course, just gets an idea, how to make sales. While a sales person working under a sales team, then he/she get a complete idea about sales knowledge. The sharing Article can get some idea for degrees sales. Very nice educational article….
I really wish they would have taught sales classes in school, at least as an elective. It seems schools here in South Alabama are beginning to offer more vocational training for high school students. I think this is great. Not everyone is meant for college and college can’t meet the needs of everyone. There wasn’t any class on how to be the best lawn care service in Point Clear. It takes a lot of on the job learning to become a great salesperson, but some training in school sure would have helped.
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Hi Vincent,
School curriculums are not designed to create entrepreneurs. Quite the opposite. They are designed to condition people to want to work as employees. Those who figure out how to launch their own business can make more money and have more resilience in challenging economic times.
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Hello AJ,
Really insightful i must say. I have never seen someone with a degree in ‘Sales’ and i wonder if there are any out there. But can sales really be separated from marketing?
If i had a degree in Marketing, is it not as good as having a degree in sales?
There is really no formular to making sales, but there are certain things a sales person must be careful to observe for example a smile, many a times its these little things that actually make the sales and not the salesperson’s ‘qualifications’.
Lovely blog you’ve got!
Thanks for Post Interesting Topic,I Think Most Of Universities are Not Recognised Sales Degree as a Profesional Degree…
Really thought provoking..Thought marketing is no different from sales to be given a degree.These findings are really new to me.
There are many industries where information changes all the time. But nothing changes faster than the sales industry.
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Really impressed! Everything is very open and very clear clarification of issues. It contains truly facts. Your website is very valuable. Thanks for sharing.
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Selling skills is one of the things that you can’t learn from school and selling something is truly an art form that takes practice to improve upon.
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In a business where results are everything, there’s little a classroom education can actually do to prepare you for the real sales world.
RE:In a business where results are everything, there’s little a classroom education can actually do to prepare you for the real sales world.
Totally disagree with this perspective.
Sales involves a definite skill set (which can and should be taught in the classroom).
NO SALE means either NO INTEREST or an OBJECTION.
With proper sales training a salesperson can distinguish between the two.
Those with no training will waste time in sales settings trying to answer
an objection when in reality there is no (or insufficient ) interest.
If there is an actual objection(s), it is a BUYING signal. The prospect is
saying, “If you solve this problem, I’ll buy.
Answering objections effectively involves the same fundamental formula
NO MATTER WHAT CORPORATION YOU WORK FOR OR INDUSTRY
YOU ARE IN.
-1- Acknowledge the objection
-2- Repeat the objection
-3- Answer the objection
-4- CLOSE the sale
Being a successful salesperson involves developing a relevant skill setMake Money Online With 15 Powerful And 
that can effectuate the above formula with ease.
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A sales degree is an uncommon object in the education system. Regardless of the reasons given above
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Awesome findings. You are right that “The results that you gained at one company will
influence whether you get a job at the next company, not what degree you happen to
hold”.
Education is the basic just like the Degree but the result is experiences which we get
by working in a company.
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