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February 2005 More Than Learning to Carry the Bag
Budding entrepreneurs will tell you that when they start a new venture, they expect one of their first hires to be a salesperson. Yet until recently the GSB had no course that taught them how to create and manage a growing company’s sales capability. This quarter marks the second time the Business School has offered Building and Managing Professional Sales Organizations, a course developed and introduced in 2003–2004 by marketing professor James Lattin and Mark Leslie, the founding CEO of Veritas Software. “We’ve organized the class around the life cycle of an organization,” says Lattin, “so that we begin with a small company and discuss issues as they come up—how do you get started, how do you get traction, how do you grow and expand? And as you get larger and more complex organizations and increasingly mature industries, what is the impact on sales?” Ten cases were written specifically for the class, including one about Veritas and its merger of two sales forces, discussed in class with the executive who directed the merger. Other topics embrace building a sales culture, forecasting sales, managing multiple direct channels, and going international. One topic never taught is how to be a salesperson. Well, almost never. Students are required to complete a “sales audit” of a company, which involves finding a sales organization and looking into how it addresses one of the issues discussed in class. “The challenge is that some of the students are reluctant to cold-call organizations,” Lattin reports, “and Mark is ruthless on this. He says, ‘You want to get a feel for what sales is like? Go call somebody up!’”
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