Abstract
Welcome to this Journal of Marketing Education (JME) Special Issue on Sales Education and Training. We proposed this Special Issue as demand for college graduates with a sales degree/major/minor/emphasis/interest continues to escalate. In addition to being the most common career entry point for marketing students, a 2010 Georgetown University study found that sales is a top-ranked career for a number of disciplines outside of marketing. Interestingly, sales ranked second for students majoring in general business, economics, international business, and management. Sales ranked third for students majoring in finance, operations management, HR, and management information systems. Across campus, sales ranked second/third for students in the social, natural, and physical sciences and in liberal arts and communications.
While the demand for graduates to work in sales grows, there is a shortage of scholarly articles dealing specifically with sales curricula and sales pedagogy. In fact, the marketing education literature has been relatively slow in responding to changes in sales education and training. Of the over 800 articles published in JME’s history, only 27 papers deal with sales education (see Gray et al., 2012).
The absence of research in sales education is not due to a lack of activity or paucity of scholars in this area. According to DePaul’s Universities and Colleges Sales Education Landscape Survey, sales curricula grew from 44 U.S. programs in 2007 to 101 programs in 2011. As demand for sales-ready graduates grows, universities are trying to meet this demand by expanding curricular offerings, opening sales centers, and hiring sales faculty. We initiated this Special Issue with a goal of engaging scholars in this area and sparking additional research.
We achieved our goal because this Special Issue is important to the marketing academy. Prior to the JME press date, the academy expressed collective interest in three ways. First, the University Sales Center Alliance (USCA; www.universitysalescenteralliance.org) offered underwriting for a $1,000 Best Paper Award to support the Special Issue. Second, JME published an invited sales education review article authored by Cummins et al. (2013), which was used in part as a call for papers for this Special Issue. Third, the American Marketing Association 2014 Summer Educators’ Conference accepted a special session proposal to showcase the contents of this Special Issue. Thus, the academy expressed its support of this Special Issue even before the research was published.
While there is advance interest in this Special Issue, we believe that the issue’s impact will grow once the articles are in circulation. We expect that the 10 articles contained in this issue will serve as a springboard for more work in this instrumental area. Growth in research in this area is our ultimate goal. Because of this interest, the JME has launched a Sales Track with Jimmy Peltier as the Associate Editor.
Inside This Special Issue
We chose to group the articles in this Special Issue into three sections: (a) Recruiting and Developing the Student Mindset, (b) Self Efficacy and Sales, and (c) The Classroom and Teaching Tools. The first section contains articles that address an important dilemma, that of aligning the student’s mind with the sales career.
Recruiting and Developing the Student Mindset
The articles in this section are of particular interest as a starting point for reducing the supply–demand gap for sales students. In “Selling Sales: Factors Influencing Undergraduate Business Students’ Decision to Pursue Sales Education,” the authors set out to understand the decision process that occurs when students choose to pursue sales as an area of interest or major. Examining this decision process among 503 business students (in a single university sample), the authors explored the positive factors influencing student choices in career/major. For those teaching in this area, it is probably not surprising that students select the sales area to leverage their creativity and people skills. A key influencer in this decision process is the student’s school advisors (in college or high school). Students pursuing sales courses also need to develop a greater appreciation for the quantitative skills and activities required for the 21st-century business-to-business value-creating sales representative.
In “Factors That Influence the Job Market Decision: The Role of Faculty as a Knowledge Broker,” the author team examines the perceptions of students, recruiters, and faculty in the area of workplace attributes for those new to the job market. This exploratory research exposes a real disconnect between the perceptions held by students and recruiters/faculty, thereby suggesting that faculty have a distinct role to play in preparing students mentally for their initial jobs. As readers digest the first two articles, the role that faculty and advisors play in shaping a student’s decision to pursue a sales career becomes clearer.
In the third article in this section, “Formulating Undergraduate Student Expectations for Better Career Development in Sales,” the authors leverage socialization theory and contrast the perceptions of sales jobs (in the areas of realism and congruence) using a sample of 175 students and over 250 sales professionals. The unfortunate news emanating from this study is that sales students do not leave the university setting with a realistic view of the sales role. In fact, the idealistic perspective that students take with them into the business world may well contribute to the higher level of turnover in professional selling roles. As faculty, we have more work to do to ensure that students leave our universities with a much more realistic understanding of the sales profession.
While the third article delves into a student’s perception of the sales role, the authors of “A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Stereotype for Salespeople” broaden the research question about the student mindset. The authors investigate student perceptions of salespeople and the sales function across a five-country sample (Cameroon, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United States). Analyzing their sample of over 850 students, they find that cultural values (as measured by the World Values Survey) play a role in driving negative stereotypes. As the global demand for salespeople continues to grow, this research serves an important function in identifying the degree to which the perceptual challenge varies across country settings.
The last article in this first section takes a decidedly different approach to the issue of student mindset. In “Enhancing the Professional Mindset of Future Sales Professionals: Key Insights for a Master in Sales Transformation,” the authors describe how a complex master’s-level program integrates work-based learning with scholarly frameworks and theories. Their research-based Master in Sales Transformation program suggests that the process by which sales education programs are “taught” must consider the desired mindset that needs to be developed. Their program was designed to influence the way sales professionals perceive their roles, shape their practice, and develop new mindsets for selling. What is refreshing about this article is that the authors go well beyond functional selling skills. Working “on the mind” as well as introducing content to embed “within the mind” will require educators to push and lead students into deeper reflection and critical thinking.
Self-Efficacy and Sales
The second section of this Special Issue focuses on self-efficacy as it relates to sales education and sales outcomes. In the first article, “The Role of Self-Efficacy in Sales Education,” the authors examine a structural equation model using a sample of 531 students from 19 different universities. They test the direct and indirect impact of sales education on sales-related self-efficacy, finding that the indirect effect (through increased sales knowledge) is the key facilitator of self-efficacy. Interestingly, they do not find a direct relationship between sales education and self-efficacy (the relationship is mediated by sales knowledge). We invite readers to explore the recommended methods for developing students’ sales knowledge (which will in turn develop more positive sales-based self-efficacy).
In “Sales Education Efficacy: Examining the Relationship Between Sales Education and Sales Success,” the author empirically assesses the relationship between what is learned in university sales programs and the actual selling behaviors of recent graduates. The author partnered with the U.S. division of a large direct sales organization that sells high-end personal products to individual consumers (a B2C sales context). The organization hires students right off the college campus, some from sales programs and others who are not (traditional college graduates). Out of their approximately 100 respondents, 4 in 10 were graduates of sales programs. The results are quite interesting. Formal sales education is a statistically significant predictor of organizational commitment as well as the salesperson’s use of key selling behaviors, such as creating emotional response, building rapport, and presenting benefits. These selling behaviors are important because behaviors such as creating emotional response and presenting benefits are linked to higher levels of objective performance. Comparing graduates of sales programs to traditional college hires, the author finds that salespeople hired from formal sales programs outperform their traditional college hire counterparts after the first year of employment. It appears that they do so by leveraging the right kinds of selling behaviors that were learned in their curriculum. Thus, the instruction being given in the sales classroom on the university campus is truly making a difference.
The Classroom and Teaching Tools
The final section of this Special Issue highlights three articles that deal specifically with classroom or pedagogical issues. To set the stage for their article, the authors of “The Advanced Course in Professional Selling” review published research and textbooks to point to the importance of an advanced sales course. Then, they lay out the rationale and recommendations for creating an advanced selling course in a curriculum designed to address professional selling. To provide a strong foundation for their recommendations, the authors collected and analyzed syllabi from faculty teaching the advanced selling course. Readers will find the summary of their analysis to be incredibly helpful when deciding how to teach or refine their approach to the advanced selling course.
While the previous article focused on an entire course, the next article identifies and tests a single technique that makes a real difference in performance and perceptions. In “Teaching Yes, And . . . Improv in Sales Classes: Enhancing Student Adaptive Selling Skills, Sales Performance, and Teaching Evaluations,” the authors explain how the simple response of “yes, and” moves a conversation forward and avoids argumentation. Interestingly, their experimental design (with a treatment group and a control group) ensured that both groups received exactly the same instruction and challenging task (15 hours of phone-based selling time). The treatment group, which was trained on the “yes, and” improv technique, showed higher sales results (which were collected by an outside party) as well as reported higher levels of satisfaction with the course. This article inspires us all with a small but powerful classroom technique.
Our last article highlights a technology-based tool in the form of a simulation. “Salesperson Ethics: An Interactive Computer Simulation” describes an interactive, web-based simulation that serves to educate and train selling students in the area of sales ethics. Using the context of a manufacturer/marketer of office equipment, the simulation prompts students to begin the simulation as an entry-level salesperson. They start with the kinds of information provided via typical on-boarding processes (e.g., job description, organizational chart, firm’s code of ethics, and a list of potentially illegal actions of salespeople). During the simulation, students encounter 48 scenarios where they must decide a course of action. The simulation is interactive and tracks/adjusts according to the student’s choices. Students also receive promotions, and they deal with dilemmas reflective of their new role. Using the simulation over a 3-year period, the author team finds that the simulation achieves its core objectives. As real perk for readers, the simulation is available free of charge, for instructional use (visit http://z.umn.edu/simulation).
The prepublication interest in this Special Issue has been exciting. We look forward to hearing from you, our readers, about how these articles have affected your thinking, your research, and your teaching. Thank you for supporting the Journal of Marketing Education by submitting your work, reading this publication, and letting your friends know about the great ideas being shared through JME.