No educational prerequisite. We sold $20,000+ complex enterprise software products. My best sales rep. ever was a high school graduate whose previous software sales experience was in a retail PC store.

In my experience the key question here is how much your solution sells for and who is going to be involved in the decision.

If it is within the engineering departments sign off limits then a sales engineer talking to an engineer is great. If any other department gets involved, particularly the CFO then politics comes into the equation and a sales rep is needed who can work the politics. He will be much more expensive and probably need to be backed up by a pre-sales consultant to talk to the engineer in detail.

The dream ticket is when you manage to get a pairing of a skilled politically astute sales rep and a good steady pre-sales consultant (known fondly in my last assignment as dem donkeys).

They are rare and costly but if you can achieve it they can transform a company or sales region.

Hi There,

Sorry I am late in replying and my answer will be short but I have pretty strong opinions o this one.

I would never hire a software sales rep that did not have a university degree.

That being said, I don't care what the degrees is in as long as it was completed. Arts/ Science/Business/pre grad or post grad it does not matter. There is no evidence that the type of education has any bearing on sales success. IE -Engineering grads don't make better sales reps than arts grads necessarily.

Instead of education specifics look for experience and skills that are related to the results you want. Do they need to cold call - hire someone with a proven record of cold calling. Do they need to develop high level relationships? Look for someone with a history of selling or interacting at an executive level.

Remember - selling is personal. Hire someone with exceptional interpersonal skills presence, and with the smarts not to learn about your product specifically but why people would want to buy your product.

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the questions.

I have found in the past that my reps without a university education have less developed writing, creative thinking, and research skills. They also have less developed communication skills and poor executive presence. I feel that starting and completing a university or college degree shows that a person is willing and able to see a project through to completion. To me, the act of going through school itself also shows that a person is interested in advanced learning and self improvement and is more open to new ideas.

As you, I know successful business people and sales people who are not university educated. I find however that they are the exception, not the norm. There are exceptions to every rule; however I find that the probability of success is much higher with my reps that are university educated vs. the ones that are not.

Kevin,

Although having a decent education (which I define at a bare minimum a high school degree) is important, sometimes too much technical education can actually get in the way of making sales.

I don't think the dollar amount of the sale is so important compared to a person's listening and questioning skills and a willingness to learn or be trained.

As Charles mentioned before, he worked with a person who had only a high school diploma and yet that person was very successful.

Getting back to my main point. Technical people have a tendency to focus on technical features rather than listening and uncovering problems and challenges and then presenting the benefits and results of solutions.

You used the phrase "The people we talk to." I believe we don't "talk to" but rather "speak with" people. Sales focuses heavily around building relationships. Yes, you must know the nomenclature of the industry however when it comes to the fine points of the technology; most of my clients' team up a sales engineer with a sales rep since different skills are required for each.

As Dennis Miller would say "Its just my opinion, I could be wrong."

Cheers!

Ron LaVine
www.telesales-training.com

After Kevin's last post, it sounds to me like the issue is not necessarily one of education (college degree or not), but one of product training and sales integrity.

Product training first. A good sales person should know the product well enough to understand when an opportunity is staring them in their face. That one is the company's responsibility to make sure the sales reps have enough training to see all of the problems that the product solves.

As for sales integrity, if a prospect asks a "stump the sales person" kind of question (and they will), the sales person needs to have the integrity to acknowledge the fact that they do not know the answer to the question.

I coach my sales folks to re-state the question to the prospect (to make sure that the issue will be properly presented to the tech staff) and then go get the answer.

My folks are instructed to never act like they know something when they don't.

I once had a broadband sales kid try to sell me a T-2 internet service. Afterall, there is a T-1 and a T-3, it only makes sense (to the kid) that there might be a T-2. Guess what, that firm never got a dime from us. Clearly, the sales kid was not properly trained on their product line and he did not have the integrity to acknowledge that he didn't know much about what he was selling.

I think Carl has made a very good point in terms of providing product training so that sales reps are, in fact, capable of recognizing an opportunity when they hear one. I also agree with the idea that if you don't know the answer to a question, be honest and admit it. Next explain that you will go and find the answer. There is nothing wrong with not knowing every single technical aspect about a product. That's one of the major reasons for having SEs. This is where Joe makes a great point about how to use SEs.

Alas I have digressed. First, I have not written any code since the one class I had in college many, many years ago. So I basically am a "non-technical" person. I learned about the software business by asking people in the computer room (they always seemed to have a lot of time on their hands) questions. Every time they used a term I did not know (for example: Sysplex, Shared DASD, CICS, TSO, MVS/SP/XA/ESA, IMS/DB, DB2, etc.) I would ask them what it meant and how it was used. Sales reps can learn a lot this way if they are willing to be patient and listen.

I have found being patient and listening can become a real challenge for those who are technically oriented. Their focus seems to shift immediately to the bells and whistles (the underlying technology) because that is where their comfort zone is. This quality is fine for a SE however it can and often does work against a sales rep.

I once trained a person who sold "integrated, large scale data mining, analysis and visualization, life sciences software, enabling researchers to quickly and efficiently extract, filter, calculate and cluster large volumes of valuable information from worldwide stores of genomic - bioinformatics data. The software through the integration, automated analysis and visualization of multiple independent predictions, gave researchers the ability to identify and validate relevant data, prioritize research projects and interpret results in the full context of all available sequence, structural and functional information."

Now it took some studying of their marketing materials to learn this language. After I learned the language that was spoken, using the product knowledge provided to me, I was able to craft qualifying questions and this was the result:

"I am now calling researchers with the intent of discovering what makes them excited and what challenges or obstacles they face, but I am not calling to sell them something. Prospects respect this consultative approach and frequently end up asking my advice or inquiring about our product line. It must be every salesperson's dream to have a prospect inquire about the product you represent. This scenario is counterintuitive to most telesales experiences and I thank you for the tools to utilize this method."
Emma Lang, Telesales Academic Account Manager
Molecular Application Group

So in the case above, being technically oriented was not as important as being able to use a consultative approach to selling. The secret is to be interested not interesting.

Just another two centsÂ?

Ron LaVine