Sales is becoming the sole driving source of earning high & growing significantly much faster in today's Corporate world. But the major problem, or should I say the dilemma is that the B-school students don't have 'the zeal' to work in Sales!
Why?
As because, in India, sales is a dirty word for management grads. Pure field sales do not attract people. Students prefer to do office work than field sales. This is an industry-wide challenge.
Head hunters has become an aspirational challenges for companies across the FMCG, Banking & Telecom sectors, where finding dedicated sales professionals, is a severe problem.
Head hunters has become an aspirational challenges for companies across the FMCG, Banking & Telecom sectors, where finding dedicated sales professionals, is a severe problem.
Recently, ICICI Bank joined hands with ITM University, to run a certificate course at it's Raipur campus, which will in return provide the bank with sales professionals every year.
On the other hand, there are several companies which starts hiring candidates in sales from Tier-III & Tier-IV b-schools, ditching the former b-schools of the country. One reason may be gaining 'low-cost leadership' and the other may be the urgency of the well trained sales force!
One of such company, is the Kolkata-based Emami Group. The group has two levels of sales force - one sales manager & other field sales staff. It has about 750 sales staffs on its rolls at various levels, from Tier-III & Tier-IV b-schools , as the frontline field sales staff. And, nearly 10% of the sales force from Tier-I & Tier-II b-schools. The company put this 10% through management trainee programme post, later they get deployed as Sales Manager in various locations.
Supreet Singh, founder & CEO of Altor Executive Search (a banking & financial services industry search company), explains when graduate pass out, they are usually ready to take up a low-end sales job.
He also adds, "Since they don't want to be sweating it out in the sun by selling products, they aspire to have a strategic role and decide to do an MBA to scale up the ladder. But they don't realize that post an MBA, it is only the salary that may see a jump and not the profile because the industry landscape is such that 80% of the jobs will be sales job."
Nowadays, companies have figured their ways out - by using employability evaluation techniques to find out if the workforce they hired are indeed sales-oriented.
"Sales professionals need to be extrovert, trustworthy & friendly. These are the traits we judge through our employability evaluation techniques." says, Himanshu Aggarwal, CEO, Aspiring Minds.
Aspiring Minds, through it's computer adaptive test 'Amcat', measures specific assessment for sales suitability. The company's clients include: SBI Life, HDFC, Axis Bank, L&T Finance, HCL, Deloitte, Mphasis, Microsoft, Mind Tree, Genpact and State Bank of India.
Unfortunately, companies hire anywhere & everywhere. This tool of evaluation is so powerful that it can even differentiate whether a person is good for B2B or B2C sales profile!
And we think that CAT/MAT/XAT is our last lesson, green entry to Corporate World..!
