What does Harvard know about selling?

The Harvard Business School has announced the completion of a study to identify the common characteristics of top salespeople. They probably spent three years, 10,000 man hours and millions of dollars to find out what I already knew.

They could have called me, saved all that time and money, and put the millions into something decent like improving the quality of their football program. For a few million bucks they could've bought themselves a good football team like the Florida Gators or the Georgia Bulldogs.   With the money from a first class football program they could fund all kinds of research projects.

But NOOO! Them Harvard snobs didn't dial the ol' Mañana Man to get the real lowdown. I know what those Harvard snobolas are like because a couple of my partners are Harvard men.

Here's what probably happened. Harvard got some grant money to study successful salespeople from some big foundation or Fortune 500 corporation. Then they rode shotgun with some salespeople from AT&T or some other huge company that sells something everybody needs. The Harvard professors probably also surveyed hundreds of Fortune 500 company salespeople and asked them what makes for a successful salesperson. After all the results were in they produced a lot of charts and graphs and printed up a report that weighs about three pounds.

That's all it took. The report was published at Harvard. It weighed three pounds. It had a lot of charts and graphs. So, it follows, this report must be new groundbreaking information and it must be the gospel.