Is the sales executive ready for university graduates?

More graduates working in sales are a good thing for companies, but it also means more challenges: Employees must have focused sales training regardless of previous education. Sales training has to take the personality and foundations of the new staff into account. That's the challenge.

Relevant figures from the sales organisation Business Danmark confirm a strong tendency towards more academic salespeople in companies. 42 % of the association's new members have an academic degree. The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations - AC launched a campaign on the 20th of February to lower the profession's unemployment rate from app. 6 per cent to 3 per cent, not least by getting members sales jobs.

Greater numbers of academic salespeople reflect a structural change. The service economy requires more salespeople doing canvassing work to think along other "sales lines". Complicated products or products adapted to the individual customer blur the boundaries between the consultant's and the salesperson's roles, and therefore all employees with customer contact need to be able to handle sales situations. Take a look at the job pages and note how often the requested qualifications end with ' - and sales'.

The trend, which has been noticeable for some time now, means that we, as a training company, need to have greater focus on sales executives. Equally on those who have been managers of salespeople, but now have new employees with different profiles, and those who haven't yet worked with sales management, or at least not perceived it as such. It is our experience that the potential within these new types of salespeople (academic) is much better exploited, when the closest manager is tuned into and geared for this special management role and task, which includes a significant element of coaching. Basically it is the ability to determine the employee's personality and to work with it.

When AC's campaign displays 'sold out' - probably soon - the companies will have to go out and recruit employees from competitors. All experiences point to one element being capable of moving labour: the work environment - especially whenever it concerns an organisation involved in training and developing.