Can Your Dog Sell?
December 11, 2011 by QBS Research, Inc.
Filed under sales humor, the lighter side
Selling continues to be the least taught profession in the world! Does anyone think that’s strange? Sales drives every company, yet most of the top business schools in the world don’t offer a sales curriculum. Somehow we rely on the thought that salespeople inherently already know “how” to sell. Maybe it’s supposed to be in our DNA? 
Consider the amount of training necessary to become an architect, attorney, doctor, engineer, teacher, nurse, pharmacist or city planner. There is a minimum scholastic requirement followed by rigorous testing and continuing education. Whew! To say that you are a sales professional only requires that you print business cards.
Case in point: In the state of Georgia (my home state), you have to have a license to catch a fish, or own a dog, but you can sell many things including sophisticated products and services without any required training whatsoever. Note that I am NOT speaking out for more legislation. Just wanted to point out the parallel between skills development and your probability of success in sales.
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They used to teach needs-based selling as a college major in the 1950s but those who followed the process to the letter found it didn’t work. Those who were the most successful (top 1%) developed their own process but still identified it as needs-based selling although it wasn’t. I dont know why the major was dropped. “Question-based” selling is a new name for needs-based selling, that is, selling based on matching the emotional process a buyer goes through from interest to the decision to buy. Does it “work”? Clearly it does because sales people are selling stuff and people are buying. Or, maybe they would have sold and people would have bought regardless, because no matter how badly a salesperson mangles the sales process, people will continue to get “hungry” for whatever they want and eventually buy it whether a salesperson is involved or not.