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Der findes én videregående salgsuddannelse i Danmark. En håndfuld i Europa. Og ca. 150 i USA. Vi går bagud i den akademiske verden inden for salg. Hør hvordan CBS’ og Danmarks eneste professor i salg går forrest for at fremme salg og hvordan de undervejs på rejsen selv er udsat for stigma i salg.
Sales has a stigma problem. Especially in Europe. And especially in Denmark.
In this episode of Oplev Salg, Joakim Steenfos sits down with Michel van der Borg, Professor in Sales at Copenhagen Business School, to explore why Denmark needed a dedicated sales education, how the stigma around sales is being dismantled, and what it means for the future of the profession when business and academia finally join forces.
Companies are actively looking for people trained in sales. Yet at the university level, dedicated sales programs are almost nonexistent in Europe.
In the US, more than 150 programs focus on sales management. In Europe, only a handful exist. CBS is the only institution in Denmark actually focusing on it.
When CBS launched its sales program in 2018, it was called Customer and Commercial Development. Fancy, but meaningless to employers and students alike.
Michel pushed to rename it. Just call it sales management. The result: 200% more applicants by 2024. Clear positioning works.
Joakim experienced stigma from friends, family, colleagues and leadership throughout his career. At Deloitte, he helped build the sales department from scratch in 2014 and spent years convincing partners that salespeople were professionals.
By the time he founded Radiant in 2017, he had become part of the stigma himself. He avoided the word sales and leaned on buzzwords instead. The shift came when he simply started saying what it is.
Michel points to a simple truth: people form their image of sales from movies and media. Wolf of Wall Street. The door-to-door salesperson. The secondhand car dealer.
Without exposure to what B2B sales management actually looks like in practice, the negative associations stick. Education changes that.
The ability to identify problems and help people solve them at the right time is not a skill reserved for a sales job. It is useful in every aspect of life.
As the program matures, more alumni are openly associating with sales on LinkedIn. The culture is shifting, and the combination of formal education and real business experience is what will keep pushing it forward.
Michel, you are one of the only actual sales professors here in Denmark. Why is there a need for a sales professor?
Great question. The need for a sales professor is clearly there because, if you just look at the numbers, a lot of people are needed in the sales domain. Companies are actually demanding people trained in the sales discipline. And it is a little bit interesting to see, maybe even paradoxical, that there is not so much education, especially at the university level or the academic level, where we have sales related programs. Companies do ask for that, and so there is a clear mismatch between, on the one hand, demand and, on the other hand, supply.
Joakim, what does it mean for the sales profession to have a dedicated education?
It means a lot. It is very important. The fact that we can now combine the business community with the educational system and an institution sort of legitimizes sales. It makes sales more viable, more normal, perceived as a career option. And it also makes a lot of sense in terms of great research that is done together. I have plenty of colleagues and clients that are very interested in research projects related to sales. Now they are motivated that when they participate in a project, they can share insight and data with an institution like Copenhagen Business School.
We have, for example, a study right now where we look at different zones in Denmark: what time during the day fits best for CXOs having conversations in regards to sales? Is it morning? Is it late afternoon? Is it midday? There is no B2B research right now doing that. And the fact that we can share that data with CBS is one of the most motivating aspects for my colleagues. It is not about the rewards or the results itself. It is about sharing it so that future colleagues and future students can use it to become better at their jobs.
Personally, when I graduated high school I knew that I loved sales. I had my heart and mind in sales. But the thing was that I felt like I didn't have any opportunity to study anything relevant to sales. My friends, my family, my network, for them it was not possible to have a career in sales because you can't study sales. So I had to go with my mind. I got into business commercial law at CBS, and I wasn't that great of a student. I didn't have my heart in it at first.
I got a job at Nykredit in their sales department. One of the first days we were shown around the buildings and we got into the sales department, and I felt this energy. I felt the vibe, I felt drawn to it, I felt the belonging. And I had missed that so much. Then we were shown into different departments and went down this aisle and it was dead silent. I didn't feel any energy. The guy showing us around told me that in this department there are a lot of commercial law and business law graduates just like you, so one day you can sit here. From that moment I knew I was going to drop out of my studies in business law at Copenhagen Business School because I just didn't have my heart into it.
I looked and looked at what I could study that was relevant to sales, and I only found something called strategic communications, which was partially relevant at best. When I look back, if I had had the opportunity to go into a study like sales management, I could have put both my heart and my mind into it. I think I would have been a great student because I could have applied my interest and skills. And I think there are thousands of great talents out there right now who now have this opportunity, and therefore it is a game changer.
Michel, do you agree that there is a general stigma around sales? If so, how does your educational program help reduce the stigma?
Yeah, I clearly see the stigma. It has to do a lot with what people are exposed to. If they don't have any experience in the sales domain, they know about sales from the movies and from the media. They will look at a movie like Wolf of Wall Street, see Leonardo DiCaprio doing all these sales related things, which always carry this kind of negative association. So people think of salespeople as the door-to-door salesperson or the secondhand car dealer. They don't want to be like that, and they actually don't have a clue what it is to be a salesperson.
If I look at it more globally, there is a clear difference between the US and Europe. Every year I am asked to fill out a survey by the Sales Education Foundation, and they publish an annual magazine with a list of all sales education in the US and across the globe. In the US there are more than 150 dedicated programs on sales management. In Europe there are only a handful of programs doing that, with CBS being the only one in Denmark actually focusing on it.
So I do see the stigma, and it is also based a lot on what people think sales is, which is not necessarily the same as what sales management actually is in practice. There is also a difference in culture. In the US there is more of a positive image around sales than in Europe.
What I personally experienced in 2018 when I joined CBS is that they asked me to join the faculty and become the director of a new program around sales and sales management. The university and the study board clearly indicated that there is a need for sales related commercial education. They did their research, wrote a white paper where they interviewed practitioners but also looked at other universities and business schools. What they found is that there is a clear need for commercial education related to digitalization, and companies are really asking for people trained and educated in those domains.
They created the program and asked me to manage it. We called it Customer and Commercial Development. That was a fancy name, and around 400 students applied for the first cohort in 2018, which was quite impressive for a completely new program. There was a clear indication that this was something both needed from the business side and attractive to students.
But when I was talking with students and business representatives, students would come to my office and say they were applying for a job but the company had no idea what the program was about, because Customer and Commercial Development sounds very fancy but means nothing to them. And then I said, well, actually it is about sales management. Some students were very happy with that because they were applying for a sales related job and it was a perfect fit. But I also had a lot of talks with students who said they did not want to be associated with sales management and asked if I could tell them something else. I would say they could mention the digitalization part or put a different label on it, whatever they thought was best, but in the end it is about sales management.
The end conclusion was that in terms of the labeling and positioning of the program it was very unclear. People had no idea what it was about. From a marketing perspective, that is poor positioning. So I suggested we just call it what it is. We have a goal as an educational institution to explain what sales management is about and put the label on it, not hide it or disguise it, just call it what it is. And then, luckily, people at CBS realized the importance of clear positioning and changed it overnight.
In the end it paid off. We are now in 2024 and we have 200% more applicants this year. It is highly attractive. I also did some quick research on LinkedIn, checking where our alumni work and where our students end up. If I just search for the words sales management, 30% of all alumni have that somewhere in their profile. So yes, there is a clear stigma, and yes, the program is helping and actually educating people that sales is not a bad thing and not something related to negative associations, but something you can have a good career in.
Joakim, have you personally experienced stigma? And if so, how has the situation evolved since the start of the Sales Management education?
I have experienced stigma in regards to sales many times, from friends, family, relations, colleagues and leadership. So many times I have heard things like: it is just because you are born with it, it is because you are extroverted, it is because you like building relationships. And if I look at myself and my experiences, I have done a career within finance and professional services, which are industries with brilliant minds and talented people with excellent educational backgrounds directly related to their profession, such as auditors and lawyers. They associate the educational aspect of what they do as being extremely important. And when they cannot relate that to a sales related education, I think it leads them, unknowingly, not to appreciate sales that much, simply because back then there was no educational background within sales that you could study.
When I started together with my co-founder and others, I helped start the sales department at Deloitte back in 2014. It was a big change within Deloitte to now have a sales department also called sales. I experienced a lot of stigma and we had to convince partners and departments that we could actually help and that we were professionals, not car sales dealerships. Not that there is anything wrong with car sales dealerships, but there are many aspects of sales. This became part of my daily business, and I myself became part of the stigma. I became indoctrinated. As the years went by at Deloitte, I had to label things differently because I saw that it resonated better internally and with clients if I relabeled it.
So when I founded Radiant back in late 2017, I myself had become part of the stigma. Even though Radiant is about helping clients grow by doing sales, I had a hard time actually labeling it as sales. I felt the need and the urge to say it was something else, something different. Even when I recruited, I had a hard time just saying what it is. So I used all the buzzwords as well to label sales as something else.
We had a sudden change at Radiant around the time I also got to know the Sales Management program at CBS. I myself found it was easier to just say it as it is: sales. It can be professional, B2B sales within finance, professional services, whatever. Just speak plainly. We went from buzzwords to actually saying what it is. We want to attract, develop and offer the best sales talents. We do sales, and we are proud of sales. It became more and more something I really like. It is my expertise, my profession, what I do for a living, and I am really proud of it. I have seen colleagues and friends also grow into that, where now it is more okay to say that sales is a career, you can study it, you can do it. So I have absolutely experienced stigma a lot, but it has been reduced a lot since the program came out.
Happy to hear that. So to sum up, the education not only reduces the stigma but also enhances professionalism and proficiency within the sales profession here in Denmark.
Yeah, a hundred percent. It helps a lot. Talents and future students now have an option, not only to work in business within sales, but also to study sales. Those two things combined are what makes sales greater and greater and reduces the stigma. The interaction between educational institutions and the business community will make sales continue to grow.
And maybe just to add to that: even though people with different backgrounds also end up in sales, research clearly shows that if you have formal sales education you will outperform even people with experience. So it really has an added value. And beyond that, sales related skills are not only something you use in a sales job. They are something you can use in any facet of life, so they are valuable in many respects.
Just that aspect alone, identifying problems and helping people solve them at the right time, is something you need and can use in any aspect of your life. Exactly.
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