With sales/Business development as his core strength, Arun is ardently helping and providing solutions to build businesses, lives, and relationships

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 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 Millennium, 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 millennial 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.

Sales ­ A Slowly Growing Profession
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 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 life blood of any organization. The simple deal is that if one can't sell, one might as well shut shop and move on as there will be no revenue to pay for expenses of running the business!

Just like any other function or career option, Sales is also a very specialized function that needs training, education and mentoring

Despite the criticality of the function and the fact that in any organization, Sales people 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 Sales people 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 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.