What courses are advised that would make my career as a sales management person successful?

Hi, Sasha! Great question and these are all great answer. I would like to piggyback off of them to further enrich the possibilities for you; Business Management and Sales Management is all about creating leads, creating valuable relationships, and continuing those relationships long after deals have been concluded. With that being said, college is the best place to start practicing and building your network, so make a lot of friends, make it a point to develop long lasting relationships, join organizations and clubs, go to office hours, and meet with your favorite professors, regularly. You can go to lunch together, grab a coffee, whatever it might be, just be sure to develop those relationships.

Also, always work on developing your interpersonal skills. These are verbal and non-verbal communication, listening, negotiation, problem solving, decision making, and assertiveness skills. You can never be too good at these things. These skills will take you far in whatever career you choose.

All the best!

Jaleel Mackey

Hi,
Good question... I would suggest courses in marketing, management, business and psychology...yes, psychology :)
Understanding how people think and behave is a big part of sales and managing people.
I would also suggest courses in statistics, computers (learning MS Office, spreadsheets/excel, powerpoint presentations, etc).

Good luck...great question... :)

With all the above excellent advice, the only thing I could add is to approach every interaction with an open, curious mind. Be always willing to listen more than you speak. Seek to ask fewer, more impactful questions that entice the other to speak more. Work to set the other at ease; take the time to get to know them on a personal level. When you know more about them and their business, you have more to work with--and an amiable business partner to boot.

I majored in Communications and minored in Business. My education has served me well in Sales, but I wish that I had taken more courses on business modeling and strategy as well as negotiation. Psychology courses would have been great as well. Good luck!

Hello. I would focus specifically on management courses and make sure you get good psychology experience as well. While sales management is also about sales, the top sales managers know how to drive sales, achieve goals and metrics, but more importantly know how to motivate people and inspire them to over achieve. Those activities have nothing to do with 'sales' and everything to do with understanding how to activate people's personalities and skill sets.

Good advice above, one thing I would add...consider what field of sales you are interested in as well. If you are interested in technology sales, maybe a computer science minor would be of value. Business Courses in general are valuable for a career in sales as understanding what drives customer requirements from a financial perspective along with business value perspective is important.

Hi Sasha,

great question. Sales is a sometimes underestimated profession, although it happens to be one the most exciting. Let's always start with the key profession on its own, as management is something that will come at a later stage in your career, however I will address this as well.

Sales per se is not really taught at universities because it is the front end of knowing business inside and out. Whilst you won't be the subject matter expert in marketing, engineering, product etc. you will still need to understand the whole picture in a depth that will give you credibility.
Here's what's important for a Sales person: Psychology, Body language, Empathy or as high level of emotional intelligence.
Further you need to understand the business of your customer, as ultimately you want to bring them value on what matters to them and not to yourself. The more you know about their struggles, their core focus etc. the more successful you will be at Sales.

When it comes to management, here's the thing - to be a good manager you need to have experience in the field, because you'll understand your employees as you'll understand your customers because you've been there yourself and have had your fair share of good and bad managers. Expertise is key and that comes with time. All of the above counts as well of course.
A good manager sets clear goals and examples and holds people accountable and values the progress and not just the win. A good manager invests quality time to develop their employee and is able to listen and not just demand. People are different and you need to be adaptable to that, you need to consider that behind every worker is a human with their own personal challenges and struggles and individual character.
Empathy again is a key thing here

Good luck

Sarah

Sales Management is about managing Customer Expectations, your Organisation goals and people who work for you. In my view, its a journey with passion.

I would advise to start the journey with management course and a strong internship in sales. Management course will provide the fabric to understand and manage expectation and goals. Internship will help you to test them on field under a coach who would continuously guide.

As Sales Management is a journey, I personally follow few things:
- Identify in your journey one or two mentors who have been successful in all three areas
- Reflect after every discussion or meeting to understand what we have achieved in all above three areas
- Have good humour and humility levels to learn from peers, superiors, your team and customers
- Always be truthful to your promises made at all levels in terms of execution. Assuring is easy but adhering assurance calls for sincere and lot of efforts
- Practice all of these again and again. The journey continues and does not stop.

While the successful career be rewarding in Sales Management, it offers lot of scope to connect with people and learn from them at all times.

A great set of courses or even programs would be organizational behavior and leadership. Each of these would prepare you for a management position within most organizations.

After all the basics of course, I recommend taking some classes that wouldn't necessarily fall into management but have been so helpful to me!!! Psychology, Human Resources, Religious Studies (has helped me understand needs of a diverse employment group), higher level writing courses and as many presentation courses as you can! Being a manager means you need to have a "command presence" about you that is not intimidating but is confident. Being a good public speaker helps no matter what course of profession you decide to pursue. Remember that you will always have internal and external customers....so be able to meet the needs of both.
Good luck!!!
Serene

Adding on to what Gary mentioned above, I would strongly suggest classes in public speaking and presentation skills. I've lost count of the number of presentations I fell asleep in. You can have the greatest idea, but if the presentation/speech isn't engaging, it will get lost.

Wow, great advise above already. The only thing I would add as you are deciding which career direction you want to go in, think about what drives you. Day to day, what adds energy and what depletes it, keep a list. Focus on the activities that adds energy to your day and build a job out of those things. That will help you love what you do and leverage your natural skills.

Good luck!