Behold the new college graduate. And one with a job, too—as a sales rep. Degree in hand, it's on to the First Day at the New Job. School is over. It's the business world now. Nothing to do but schedule the appointments, make the calls and sell, sell, sell.

Right?

Er, not so fast, young graduate.

It is true that the foundation for the sales rep's technical training is set during their college undergraduate years. And, as more colleges expand their general business curriculum, today's graduates are well ahead of the proverbial curve compared to their peers of, say, 10 years ago.

But business instructors at both the college and corporate level say it's just as true that the learning curve gets steeper immediately—and becomes more challenging—upon graduation.

"The knowledge base is growing at such a rapid pace," says Jim Miller, vice president of sales and marketing for General Tool & Supply Co. in Portland, Ore., "that if you aren't learning, reading and reinventing yourself annually, you're literally going backwards."

Are Texas A&M's newly minted sales reps sometimes surprised that their learning has only begun?

"Oh, to say the least!" laughs Ben Zoghi, professor and director of the Read Center for Distribution Research and Education at Texas A&M University. "That's my challenge with my students. I tell them, 'As soon as you walk off the stage and get that diploma, you'd better start learning.'"

Texas A&M's business curriculum offers an industrial distribution major. One-third of the courses focus on distribution management, Zoghi says, which includes sales, transportation, technology, inventory management, and sales strategy. Other ground covered deals with business and marketing as well as some economics and accounting. The remaining third of an ID major's time is spent on technology and engineering courses.

"We give them a big picture of what distribution is all about," Zoghi says. "And then we start them with some fundamental courses in areas such as selling, effective communication and then build on top of that."

"Coming out of school, there's a technical component that a student certainly needs to have," adds Zoghi's colleague, Brian Reynolds, associate director of the Read Center. "But when they graduate and take a job, their company will get very specific in terms of technical training."

Reynolds' point is illustrated by a company like General Tool, which covers the northwest of Oregon as well as Washington and Idaho. Industrial Tool and Supply, a division of General Tool, has customers in Arizona and New Mexico, as well as northern Mexico. In all, they sell products from more than 1,400 manufacturers.

General Tool is divided into business units, with each unit focused on different segments of the industries General Tool serves. A sales rep at General Tool might have to develop specific knowledge of products in areas such as abrasives, construction, maintenance, electronics, hand-tools; machine shop, material handling, power and air tools, precision tools, and safety materials.

Asking Miller what General Tool looks for in a sales rep, and what technical training is essential, is like asking how deep is the ocean.

A talent for sales and a personality to match are valuable, he admits, but "if you have some 500 product lines," Miller says, referring to General Tool, "it's really hard merely to hire a 'good guy' and just put him in the field. Our industry is hard for someone to come into from, say, the insurance industry or cars."

Miller's challenge at General Tool reflects the findings in INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION's 57th Annual Survey of Distributor Operations. Out of nearly 800 responses, 53 percent said there were not enough salespeople with the appropriate technical expertise available to hire.

The survey also showed that it was the smallest distributors (sales volume of $5 million or less) who had the toughest time finding technically trained people: just 44 percent of these companies said there were enough available to hire. Of the largest sales volume companies ($20 million or more), 56 percent answered that there was enough talent in this area.

Miller and General Tool can relate to these numbers.

"Let's say the rep has to go into a manufacturing plant and sell in a technical environment where potential customers might say 'I've got a machining problem,'" he says. "If you don't understand all the concepts involved in a machine shop, if they're not commonplace terms, you can't even go and make that call. I don't care how good you are with people."

Many of the more successful sales reps at General Tool have started in the warehouse.

"We won't throw a new guy right into the technical side of our business," Miller explains. "I'll put him on selling our general-line commodity products and let him cut his teeth there. Then I'll put him with one of our more seasoned guys. You kind of grow him through it."

Like a successful baseball team and its farm system, General Tool's warehouse gives management a chance to see potential sales reps develop.

"If they start in the warehouse, I'll get feedback all the way through [their development]," Miller points out. "We may filter the better ones from the warehouse to, say, the front counter where they get more experience working with product and people. The best from that may get promoted to inside sales. From there, some would move into outside [sales]. If they come through the organization, you learn more about them."

Given the array of technically oriented products that General Tool handles, learning and adaptability is constant. Miller says he's fortunate to have many sales reps that embrace these challenges thrown before them. It's an ability that is vital, he says, but can't always be detected in the interviewing process.

"In many cases, you don't know that about them when you hire someone. But you can start to see it by what product lines they gravitate to, and how much they really get involved in a problem, how much they'll research it and want to learn everything there is."

The type and method of technical training for a sales rep at General Tool varies depending on their business unit and product line, Miller says. Part of his dilemma is that there really isn't one specific training path to take, adding, "It's multi-faceted based upon the type of technical product that you're going out to sell."

Depending on the job requirement or customer, General Tool can take advantage of factory schools, community colleges or technical schools that might be offering a particular course.

"We decide what's the best way, based on what we're going to ask them to do, then we decide how to bring them that skill set," Miller explains. "It really is dependent on what they're selling and what training is available."

One product line at General Tool can be very different from another (precision tools versus abrasives, for example). In addition, each sales rep will still have General Tool's full industrial catalogue to sell from.

"I need to have those reps trained in their unique set of products," Miller says, describing many of them as "generalists with some specialization."

Once a talented rep shows his skills, Miller and his colleagues at General Tool will display patience in the ongoing developmental process—but only up to a point because, as Miller says, results still count the most. It is, after all, a sales job.

"When I hire someone, they need to understand that, as salespeople, you drive numbers," he says. "But there are some sales reps who, even though they talk the game well, may not do the follow through on a deal, or don't get back to people on time. And that's not something that's easy to test for or 'read' in the interviewing process."

As with the ballplayer who can "do it all," finding the combination of sales skills and technical expertise is rare, Miller admits.

"Your really good salesmen who are good 'people' people and have charisma and outgoing personalities, don't tend to be the best [technical] specialists," he explains. "You just love it when you get one who can do both, but they are more the exception than the rule."

Precisely because these are rare exceptions, General Tool takes a pragmatic "do what's necessary" approach to their technical training.

"It is a matter of trying to match people with opportunity," Miller says from his manager's perspective. "But if the sales numbers are there, and training is still needed in technical skills, we'll get them that."

General Tool's willingness to get essential training for its people is not common at all companies. Todd Youngblood is the managing director/CEO of the YPS Group, which specializes in sales process engineering and sales training. Many companies cut back on their training budgets during the economic slowdowns, he says.

"But that's actually the best time to do that training," he insists. "The economy is bad, customers don't have as much money, so they aren't going to be buying products anyway. Take that slack time and run through your training, see what's needed."

More often than not, though, Youngblood will see people nod their heads in agreement before telling him that the budget just won't allow it.

"But what is also frustrating," he adds, "is that when times are good, there isn't always enough time to do it [training]. It's a 'Catch 22' in a way."

When "the budget" does allow for it, many companies send some of their people to programs similar to those offered at Texas A&M's Read Center, which offers various professional development seminars to manufacturers and distributors. In recent years, many of the seminars and related programs have been modified and are now geared toward a company's specific needs and problems, rather than a more general program, Zoghi says.

"Companies want us to focus the training sessions on their challenges. And many companies are very proactive these days, to make sure the program will be designed and tailored for their specific needs," he explains. "So we meet with them and try to custom design the program for their problem, their territory and their business rather than selling them a generic canned program."

Reynolds adds that, since so many industries are having to do more with fewer people these days, proper training, especially in the technical realm, becomes all the more vital.

"Three years ago, if you had 18 salespeople, now you may have 12," he says. "Well, those 12 have to be more technically competent about the product than the others needed to be. They're covering more accounts with fewer people. You need to get maximum return on the time you invest when you're in front of a customer. So you have to be more technically competent and more technically trained. And that goes back to how well you are prepared."