I am of the personal opinion that the Sales profession is more similar to a trade, like being an Electrician, Plumber, Cobbler, or Mechanic, than professions like Engineering, Accounting, and Marketing where the knowledge required is far more linear in nature, and where facts rather than experience often drive success.
My rationale behind this is that Sales is generally something that requires hard learned experience and time spent actually getting wins and making mistakes, rather than learning about an "ideal system" and just implementing that.
I think our profession could benefit from taking the approach of apprenticeship for our less experienced cohorts, helping cultivate better sales expertise and knowledge earlier and earlier in the career, rather than making it a dog-eat-dog world where you get left out in the cold until you figure it out.
Not that Apprenticeship is easy - There is certainly hard and shitty work to be done to learn the basics from the ground up. But I fundamentally disagree with the 'churn and burn' shops that so many of us have worked at or heard about over our careers.
In the long term, if we all pay it forward and invest in creating better sales professionals, that improves all of our job prospects and earnings, and has a chance to start redeeming the reputation of Sales as a profession.
I'm sure there's some heated opinions on this and I'm curious about yours. Do we need more apprenticeship to help build better reps? Or do we just toss them in the Boiler Room and the 1 that survives out of 50 gets a chance at the table?
Walk with me? Or just Fuck or Walk?
Commence discussion!
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