We talk about sales: the non-negotiable engine that validates a business model, builds strategic relationships with customers and sustains the growth of any company. And yet, sales continue to be the hidden subject both in academia and in the day-to-day life of many organizations.
In 2023, when analyzing the curricula of the best MBAs in the world collaborating from Scalabl® in the creation of a new Global MBA from a prestigious university, I was surprised by the absence of commercial and sales subjects.
While MBAs are loaded with Finance, Competitive Strategy, Leadership and some have recently been updated with Digital Marketing, Social Networks, Data analytics and AI, their graduates end up facing an uncomfortable reality: Without sales, there is no business. Without a sales process, there is no growth. And today, without sustained sales, we do not survive the rapid changes in the market, nor do we manage to establish new business units.
Why was it left out? Corporate bias and inherent complexity
The corporate bias: For years, the objective was to prepare professionals for multinational or large companies with already established commercial funnels. The sales area was operational and undesirable in contrast to the glamorous areas such as strategy, finance or marketing.
Inherent complexity: Every company and product has its unique sales process, originally designed by its founder and then adapted over time. At this stage, companies have repetitive training manuals.
The result: professionals and companies that do not know how to adapt their existing sales process or generate it for new business units, because they do not understand the basics of the commercial process.
The sale: the founder's journey that no one tells
The founders discover it the hard way. Selling is a process that demands:
Creativity to attract or search: content, channels, go-to-market, lead generation.
Empathy to interact: strategic interviews, value generation in each contact (nutrition), cold calling, emailing, qualification.
Discipline to convert: roadmaps, metrics, constant optimization.
Application of tools: CRMs, AI, Automations, etc.
It is an artisanal path, full of trials and errors, that no MBA will give you ready in a manual. But those who master the sales process validate, grow and scale their business faster than anyone else.
Teaching how to sell requires iterating, experimenting, and discovering what works for each business.
The good news
In recent decades, companies that began as Startups and revolutionized the world of sales such as Salesforce and Hubspot generated a lot of knowledge in what today is called Outbound sales (going out to find customers) and Inbound (attracting them to us).
Independent entrepreneurs and some authors have delved into generating concepts and methodology that generates a common and applicable language to this process of exploring, measuring and finding predictable and scalable sales funnels.
The opportunity
At Scalabl® we work with our partner Universities to keep their curricula and educational experiences adapted to the future of work and business.
Motivated by the content that I transmit in this same article, a month ago we very successfully launched a Community Sales learning initiative: Scalabl® Sales
I spent several months consolidating the best existing literature and content on Sales with Generative AI and presented it in a Sales Map.
With a clear framework of all the stages that the sales process covers and its possibilities, we are receiving specialists every month who support us in deepening the practice and application of the concepts and tools to our companies.
The experience is being fascinating.
Would you like to join our Sales learning community? - Scalabl® Sales
Are you interested in working with this topic in your company at a training or consulting level? - Scalabl® Training & Development
Would you like to work on the contents of your University or educational institution? - Scalabl® Universities
