As we used to say back in the day… Now Tom Peters claims to be on an old/new campaign to elevate sales to the pedestal it belongs:

I’m on a new campaign. (Old campaign, really, but renewed vigor—and I
single it out from the noise.) I am trying to put … SALES … back on
the pedestal it deserves. In the process I suppose I’m down-grading
marketing—and that’s more than okay per me. Of course I think marketing
is incredibly important, but I think it intellectually comes second
after sales—and the like of MBA programs have mostly eliminated sales
from the picture. Stupid!

Here’s the link to his post.  M.B.A. Track columnist Ronald Alsop recently wrote an
interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about the lack
of sales courses at the major biz schools:

A
company’s sales force is its lifeblood. But you’d never know it by
looking at the typical M.B.A. curriculum. Because they’re lighter on
theory and research than
other academic subjects, sales courses are surprisingly scarce in
M.B.A. programs. "It’s sad that something as important to the economy
as sales shows up as a footnote in the principles of marketing course
at most graduate business schools," says Andy Zoltners, a professor at
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which has long
offered a class in sales-force management.

Read the complete article online here (subscription required).

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