Some of my Meltwater colleagues recently sent around a thought-provoking piece published recently in the New York Times. Guy Kawasaki, a co-founder of Alltop, a news aggregation site, and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, reflects on lessons learned so far in his career and gives advice on building important skills.
His first job, of all things, was selling jewelry, and he says he learned a fundamental lesson: “… how to sell. Sales is everything. As long as you’re making sales,” he says, “you’re still in the game.”
Guy interestingly goes on to criticize the investment banking and consulting professions, advising graduates to focus on building key skills: “Jobs for college graduates,” he says, “should make them gain knowledge in at least one of these three areas: how to make something, how to sell something or how to support something.”
I think Guy brings up interesting points in terms of not exclusively equating success with glamorous titles and money. He emphasizes the value in learning key skills, like how to sell, that will prepare you to take on greater challenges and eventually make you a great manager, leader, or innovator. I think sales is a great fundamental skill to learn (I did it), but in addition to sales, the ability to create objectives and strategies, and to execute on them well is also important. I want to hear from you though… what are other important career-building skills that you feel people need to learn, or does sales trump all?
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One of the traits of greats is to make things simple.
With 9 years of corporate expertise I can say, it’s difficult to express the core corporate goal simpler: “how to make something, how to sell something or how to support something.”
Sales is definitely one of the major foundations of business. At the end of the day, there is an exchange, and in a democratic world, you have to give the consumer a reason to choose you over someone else–so you need to sell, or you are not in business.
Many organisations understand this; and therefore, many a successful graduate programs start with Sales as it gives you real-time exposure to who exactly the buyer, and what are her concerns. Furthermore, in senior management, I have often heard leaders speak of how important people management skills are. These, along with a grasp of your business’ financials (the core business model) in Sales.
However, having said that, I would like to reiterate that there are different strokes for different folks. As much as I concur-with and admire Guy, I will have to admit that just as not everybody can be a doctor, not everybody can be a salesman. Some people are better off being a consultant or a banker!