Related: Sales MBA Programs by the Numbers
All Stephanie Ford wanted to do was sell.
She had been working in market research for six years, but she realized that if she ever wanted to be moved to a client-facing sales position, she was going to have to put in at least five or 10 more years.
"There wasn't a lot of mobility in the corporate culture of the firm I was in," said Ford. "It was common knowledge that if you didn't have a lot of experience in account management, you had a way to go, and it would take a long time."
To bump up her chances, she enrolled in an MBA program with a sales concentration at the University of Toledo.
Today, she works as a salesperson at Ohio-based financial services firm Seymour and Associates, and credits her sales degree for accelerating her career. "I feel like 85% of the reason I'm even in a sales position is because of that MBA," she said.
When it comes to sales, the school of hard knocks has often been posited as the only school a good salesperson needs to attend. But whether it's because schools need more tuition money, or simply because sales has grown into a more complicated profession, needing technical skills and business acumen, graduate-level programs in sales are cropping up everywhere.
There has always existed a certain tension between academia and sales. Sales is a skill that cannot be taught, say some experts; either you're born with it, or you don't have it. Henry Glickel, president of Salem, N.H.-based Sales Recruiters Inc., points out that people don't go to college wanting to be in sales. "They fall into it," he said.
The skills you need, like organization, communication and a focus on achievement, are not things that are ordinarily taught. "Sales technique, like how to close, can be taught, but that's like teaching a surgeon how to hold a knife," he said. "It's not enough."
Though sales technique classes have been around for a long time in the form of training programs at sales institutes, MBA sales programs are going beyond technique to teach sales theory.
Linda Richardson, founder of global sales training firm Richardson believes that there is an entire "middle area" of salespeople that these programs can reach and benefit. "It's not magic," she said. "There is a truly a process, and if you teach students the process, they can be of much more value to the companies they will work with."
Richardson has been teaching sales classes to MBA students at The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania for 20 years. There is space for about 25 students in each class, but Richardson said demand far exceeds supply.
"The issue is that sales as a profession is much more sophisticated than before, and sales is a driving force in any economy," she said. "But there is a tremendous imbalance. There are MBA programs for marketing, but how many marketing jobs are there out there compared to sales? Maybe one to every 40."
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, college graduates right out of school are offered sales jobs more than any other profession aside from teaching. And according to the University Sales Education Foundation, only 40 undergraduate colleges in the U.S. out of 4,000 offer sales programs. But when it comes to graduate or MBA-level sales programs, you can count them on one hand.
This market gap is the raison d'etre for DePaul University's MBA concentration in sales leadership. "The reason we built this is because there are too few schools providing resources to sales candidates, and it's even more acute at the graduate level," said Daniel Strunk, managing director at the Center for Sales Leadership, which houses the program at DePaul.
DePaul's sales MBA, which started in 2005, consists of four selling courses along with the regular MBA classes. Strunk said there are about 25 students that graduate with an MBA in sales leadership each year. Most enter the part-time program with industry experience, looking for an opportunity to round it off with academic training
Alternatively, for those with not a lot of prior selling experience, the MBA sales track at the University of Houston's Sales Excellence Institute sees about 50 students a year graduate, most with no prior sales experience. The track, which provides a full-time MBA, is geared to people who want to learn selling, not only because they want to become salespeople, but because it's a vital skill, according to Carl Herman, the director of operations at the institute and a professor. But Herman said it doesn't necessarily guarantee a good sales job. "Most recruiters are not yet attuned to looking for candidates who have gone through an MBA sales curriculum," he said. "What we teach is business acumen."
At Toledo, about 20 students graduate per year with the degree. The school introduced the MBA offering in sales two years ago. The impetus? What Deirdre Jones, the program's assistant director, calls "a perfect storm." "There is increasing research that formal training is necessary in sales, and there is also a graying workforce [and] that means millennials need to have skills, and fast."
And new programs are slowly being established. This January, Nova Southeastern University's Sales Institute will bring in its first class of sales MBA students. It expects about 50 students to start with them. "We're running the program because we're listening to what the market tells us. It's market-driven education," said Michael Fields, dean.
Graying Workforce
The aging workforce has hit sales harder than other professions. As baby boomers retire out of sales, it's hard to find enough millennials willing to take their place.
One way to make up for the shortfall is to fast-track salespeople so that they spend less time training and more time working. According to Michael Boehm, executive director of the professional sales institute at Illinois State, which offers bachelor's degrees in sales, a student that leaves with a degree in sales become job-ready six-to-twelve months faster than those who are coming from marketing or other degrees.
"The company's cost of hiring is significantly lower, because they don't have to train them as much," he said. "People are becoming more willing to hire candidates with the degrees."
Write to Shareen Pathak
Related: Sales MBA Programs by the Numbers
