Chally Expands its Support to Premier Graduate Programs

For nearly a decade, Chally has been assisting the business and marketing departments of several major universities with research data, seminar presentations, reference data, and reports. For the past three years, Chally has presented World Class Research Seminars for Columbia University. Columbia's professional management programs are well received in the business community, and in fact, The Economist magazine has rated Columbia's Graduate School Programs as Number One in the world.

More recently, Rutgers University has begun sales and sales management programs targeted at developing high potential salespeople and sales managers. Chally will be honored to provide content support for this program, also.

For more information about Columbia's Approach to Sales Management, go to www.gsb.columbia.edu/execed/Open/smp.html or contact Dr. Noel Capon, Chair of the Marketing Division through execed@columbia.edu.

Information regarding professional development opportunities at Rutgers can be found at www.cmd.rutgers.edu or by contacting Abe Weiss, Director, Rutgers University, Center for Management Development at abew@rci.rutgers.edu.

Sales is Emerging as a "Professionally Trained" Career

The announcement above, touting the great new graduate level programs being offered by world class universities, is a harbinger of the major business trends Chally predicted in a previous newsletter summarizing the Chally/CNNfn program.

Sales as a profession is finding a still emerging but strong supportive voice in the academic community. There are now several colleges such as the University of Akron, the University of Toledo and the University of Memphis that offer under graduate degrees in sales. Other colleges, such as Ohio University and the University of Houston, offer sales certification at the undergraduate level.

The number of college-level faculty dedicated to sales has increased dramatically in recent years. In fact, sales faculties at colleges and universities that emphasize personal selling and sales management courses within their business curriculum have established the Sales Educator Network http://cbpa.louisville.edu/salesnetwork.

This network, co-edited by Buddy LaForge from the University of Louisville and Eli Jones of the University of Houston, now has nearly 100 members from almost as many institutions.

There is also a major professional journal dedicated to sales: The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management (JPSSM). In addition, 18 other professional journals publish research and articles focused on sales.

 The days of Willie Lohman and Glengarry Glen Ross are fading quickly.