Paul Owen, MD of True Sales, was 32 years old before he got his first sales job. That job changed his life – he went from living on a friend’s sofa with £27,000 worth of credit card debt to earning a six-figure income in just four years. Since then, he has founded his own sales training firm, helped over 10,000 people improve their sales skills through his consultancy, podcast and work with universities and, most recently, launched three online sales courses through the True Sales Academy.
Now, Paul is questioning why sales was never presented to him as a study option in school – and why we’re still not educating our young people in this important area of work. He comments:
“Right now, the UK economy is on the edge of recession, after a flat end to 2023. Yet we’re not preparing young people to take a proactive role in the business world when they leave school. In the book To Sell is Human, author Dan Pink estimated that there are three million people working in sales in the UK. None of them were provided with the skills they would need in school – and neither will future generations of salespeople unless we begin to teach our young people what sales is.”
This lack of understanding of sales – exacerbated by the lack of education on the topic – means that many people don’t understand what it means to sell. Instead, movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street feed our misconceptions of what sales is all about.
Ultimately, selling is a search for truth – a means of helping buyers to understand their needs and how they can best meet those needs. It’s not about forcing products on people who don’t want or need them. Sales, done properly, isn’t some kind of mysterious coercive process. It’s an open dialogue that supports buyers to recognise what it is they need and why. Then – and only then – is it time to discuss which products or services might help them. This search for truth is at the heart of all good buying decisions.
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There are various skills that enable salespeople to work positively with buyers to achieve this. Active listening and clear communication are essential, and both can easily be taught to young people. Doing so would, according to True Sales’ Paul Owen, not only benefit those who end up in sales roles. He explains:
“Being able to actively listen and to express yourself clearly can benefit people in myriad ways in the workplace. It’s not just about selling well – these are skills that can help you progress your career, get on better with colleagues, support better performance in meetings, handle conflict gracefully and all sorts of other benefits. They can benefit you in your personal relationships too, meaning teaching sales in schools can help people both in and outside of the workplace.”
With adding sales to the curriculum able to benefit individuals and the wider economy, it is hard to understand why this important skillset is so roundly ignored by education providers. Owen believes that the misconceptions around sales contribute to this but the result is a vicious cycle: sales is viewed negatively, so it isn’t taught in schools, which contributes to sales being viewed negatively… and so on and so on.
Even at university level, finding an education in sales is tough. A search on What Uni for sales degrees brings up a single university – Cardiff Metropolitan University – which offers a degree in Sales and Marketing Management. Of the modules listed for that degree, less than half focus directly on sales.
“The UK is missing such a huge opportunity,” concludes Owen. “We could be providing learners with essential skills that lead to economic rewards. It’s long past time that we added sales to the curriculum and supported our young people and our economic growth.”
