Sales: A new choice among the workforce community
Table of Content
Sales: A new choice among the workforce community (Sales for Coworking & Commercial Real Estate Bangalore India)
-by Arun Narayan, Chief Business Officer at BHIVE Workspace
– published in November’18 issue of Silicon India’s Startup city magazine
Career decisions are typically made between the ages of 15-18. The primary considerations
being the interest areas of the individual and the kind of remuneration/livelihood the said
career can bring in over the next 30-40 years.
A couple of decades ago, the typical thought process would be that a degree in Engineering
or Medical would be the ideal career choice as they were the most lucrative and sustainable
options.
With the advent of the new Millenium, newer options in the areas of Technology
and the Creative Arts started to compete with the traditional ones and have now found a
strong foothold in the minds of the new Millenial workforce. So much so, that we now have
Universities curating courses in Data Science, Coding, Creative writing, Choreography,
Photography etc along with the time-tested Engineering and Medical courses.
Amidst all of these changes and over many decades now, one profession has quietly been
chosen by a fairly large number of new entrants to the workforce community despite there
not really being a mainstream curated Degree to teach people the nuances of the
profession. And this is the profession called “Sales”. This happens to be the lifeblood of any
organization. The simple deal is that if one cant sell, one might as well shut shop and move
on as there will be no revenue to pay for the expenses of running the business!
Despite the criticality of the function and the fact that in any organization, Salespeople are
the ones going out into a big bad world and trying to cajole and coax a consumer (with a
very independent mind) into buying their company’s products or services, Sales is still seen
as a profession that someone would only get into if they did not really fit into anything else.
A large portion of the Salespeople in the world are only here by default rather than design.
This needs to change and change very quickly. A key factor to bring in this change would be
the way the profession and the people are viewed by industry in general. Universities would
also need to rework their curriculum to include a Graduate Degree in Sales similar to what
they have for Arts, Commerce and others.
Just like any other function or career option, Sales for coworking spaces is also a very specialized function that
needs training, education and mentoring. There are different types of selling – Enterprise,
Retail, Showroom, FMCG, Concept selling to name a few. The skill sets required for each of
these sub functions is so vastly different that each needs special focus and coaching. To help
provide a better perspective, think of a heart doctor conducting a kidney operation. This is
the same as telling someone in Enterprise Sales to suddenly start selling FMCG goods.
Reference – https://www.siliconindiamagazine.com/magazine/sales-and-marketing-special-november-2018/