Training salespeople at tertiary level

Abstract

Determining what to include in a sales training programme is an important task for both practitioners and academics. Practitioners usually design a training programme using company or industry tradition, personal preferences or biases, and experience. This haphazard approach frequently results in poor sales training programmes. Academics, on the other hand, attempt to train students to become salespersons by emphasising only the theoretical aspects. This article attempts to overcome this shortcoming by introducing a practical component, a ‘‘sales project’’ that is designed to equip students with the necessary selling skills and real-life sales experience. This article also serves as basis for future researchers to empirically test the success achieved by salespersons/students that have been trained by using such a sales training programme.