If you interview thousands of salespeople like I have, one of the first things you'll learn is that not one of them ever considered sales as a future career when they were in school. They went to school for engineering, music, computer sciences, geography, history, English, and even accounting. None of them went to school for Sales.
While mothers who wanted their sons to be doctors and fathers who wanted their daughters to have a career had some influence in their kids' future, today I observed first-hand another of the possible reasons for this phenomenon.
Our local Chamber of Commerce participates in the Schools/Business Partnership, a good cause to which my company contributes each year. Today the Chamber sent an email asking business people to speak at a local high school and discuss the career paths that they took and why their career might be a good choice for the students to pursue. Here is the list of careers for which they solicited speakers:
Careers/Majors:
- Accounting/Finance
- Architecture
- Art/Music/Film
- Biochemistry
- Biology
- Business
- -Business Administration
- -Business Management
- -Business/Hotel/Restaurant Management
- -Marketing
-
- Chemistry
- Child Development
- Communications
- Computer Science
- Construction Management
- Criminal Justice
- Culinary Arts
- Education
- -Early Childhood Education
- -Elementary Education
- -English
- Engineering
- -Computer Engineering
- - Electrical Engineering
- Exercise Science
- Nursing
- Pharmacy
- Physician's Assistant
- Physics
- Pre-Law
- Pre-Med
- Psychology
- Sports Medicine
I must be losing my vision because regardless of the number of times I looked, I still didn't see Sales on the list. So here we are, late into 2008, and the profession is still so disrespected that they don't even want to expose high school kids to the opportunity to earn more than most of the careers listed above.
(c) Copyright 2008 Dave Kurlan