A college curriculum in sales should include a class in the Art of Selling. The Minnesota School of Business teaches such a course. Selling is an art. You must know how to approach people and cater your message to your demographic. To do this efficiently, you must research the members of your target group and find out what is important to them, then be able to decide how best to turn members of that group into loyal customers.
Classes in speech and business presentation will help you to better publicly articulate your message. Such a class will teach you the basics of how to speak compellingly and confidently to your audience. The goal of the instructor is to teach you to communicate your passion and enthusiasm in such a way that will be contagious. As marketing instructor Christopher Lemley suggests, learning to make your presentations more interactive, as opposed to boring your audience by deluging them with facts and figures, is vital.
No matter how strong your personal moral and ethical code is, you as a student would benefit from a course in sales ethics. This kind of class will prevent you from making ethical mistakes you may not even realize until it's too late and you've lost both your job and your credibility as a salesperson. Such a class will also help you make sound decisions when it comes to accepting an offer from a company. It may help you to decide to do some research on the company's ethical background before deciding to work for them.
Marketing courses are important to take in college. At the Minnesota College of Business, for example, there is an excellent example of such a class. It helps the student focus on the four major principles in marketing: the "product, price, place and promotion." The instructor of such a course is likely also to teach you the difference between marketing and sales. According to the Small Business Notes website, sales is the act of attempting to get a consumer to buy a product based on how it is. Marketing, on the other hand, attempts to modify the product to suit the consumer or customer demographic.
As a person studying to be a salesman, you should also take classes on Internet sales and marketing, especially if you want to become an entrepreneur. This class will cover topics such as how to create a website, how to design it in a professional manner and how to write a description of your products and services. Such classes will also teach website promotion techniques that have proven to work overtime. The Internet is commonplace now and is an important instrument to use in promoting your brand.