According to Jim Dickie, a managing partner with Boulder, Colo.-based Chief Sales Officer (CSO) Insights, there are only five educational institutions in the United States that provide a four-year degree in sales: the University of Toledo, William Patterson University, Kennesaw State University, the University of Washington and Baylor University.
Locally, Marquette University offers a class through the marketing department called “sales management,” which is an elective that is recommended for marketing majors, said Dennis Garrett, associate professor of marketing at Marquette.
Carroll College and Alverno College offer a couple of classes, and Cardinal Stritch University offers a certificate program in sales and sales management through its College of Business.
“The No. 1 biggest problem we have on the academic side is to try to encourage students to think about sales, because so many students have a negative stereotype of sales,” Garrett said. “They just have a hard time realizing that there is a tremendous diversity of types of sales jobs. We encourage them to take the sales class to see the variety of different jobs out there.”
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee offers a course on business-to-business sales and marketing and a periodically offered class called “sales seminar,” said Kanti Prasad, dean of UWM’s Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business. The sales seminar rotates topics focused on the process of selling, including persuasive techniques.
“They are always in great demand,” Prasad said. “Students are very cognitive that selling is a core activity to the success of any enterprise.”
The Wisconsin Foundation for Independent Colleges (WFIC) in Milwaukee has taken a proactive approach to the lack of interest in the insurance industry by creating an insurance consortium for companies and an insurance institute for students.
Students enrolled in independent colleges can be placed at an internship through the insurance institute for one summer in a residential program. The first institute was conducted last summer, and the WFIC has already seen a positive response from both the insurance and college communities, said David Wolfson, vice president of WFIC.
Mike Derdzinski, president of Johnson Insurance of Southern Wisconsin in Racine, is part of the consortium and believes it is helping educate students while stopping the brain drain in the state.
“If students go through our program and show aptitude for particular areas, if they show interest in wanting to work here and assuming there are openings, it is absolutely a great and mutually beneficial situation,” Derdzinski said.
This approach is unique in the educational realm, however, Garrett said.
“It is difficult for me to admit, but a lot of colleges face a challenge in teaching sales because there are other units on campus that think it is too much of a technical training type of focus and that we should not be teaching something of that nature,” Garrett said. “We disagree. It has traditionally been a challenge for a university to do a much better job to try to make students aware of what reasonable career paths they have.”
The stereotypes of salespeople and the unrealistic expectations that some students majoring in business have about landing a six-figure management position right out of college contribute to the lack of students interested in pursuing careers in sales, Garrett said.
“When I identify students who are really interested in sales, I always encourage them to take a ton of communication classes and to major in marketing and minor in communication,” Garrett said. “If they do that and their goal is sales, companies will be all over them to hire them.”
