Sales skills are learned through experience, not in the classroom
Posted on August 03, 2024 by Vijay Rajendran, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
MBA programs’ courses in negotiation and communications are often underappreciated as skills where you can get better over time and apply whether you
Selling is one of the most important skills for individuals. However, I’ve observed, that is it not the highest short-term ROI job for most MBAs. The most selective (best) MBA programs select for folks with many talents, but certainly high GMAT scores and who are therefore very analytical. Most are quants and not poets. This is reinforced in typical first-year coursework.
The greatest leverage of their initial abilities is often in consulting and banking at the associate level. Later on [surprise!], consulting partners and bank MDs are sales/relationship managers where they can leverage the intellectual horsepower of a team. This is learned in a typical apprenticeship-based system in these firms rather than something that is easily trainable in a one-size-fits-all MBA program.
Now, tech may be replacing consulting and banking as the likely career path for grads of top-ranked MBA programs. Product management (where you broker the roadmap between engineering, marketing, and sales) is where the greatest managerial and skill leverage exists (again, not directly in sales). That’s why MBA programs’ courses in negotiation and communications are often underappreciated as skills where you can get better over time and apply whether you are directly selling or not.
