The remark on selling, suggesting that selling can't be taught, was not right:<p>E.g., I have an uncle who taught his sons selling, right, not for, say, P&G, GE, GF, UGE, IBM, but for his own business.<p>The son's business? Private label industrial floor cleaning supplies, major supplier for all of on US state. Why <i>private label</i>? Because the basic supplies are from a stable, old industry. The main issue is the one on one selling of those supplies to actual customers who actually use the supplies. So, the old industry that makes the supplies to fill some train of railroad tank cars is plenty eager to put the supplies in 55 gallon barrels or just 10 gallon buckets for the selling, with private label, my cousin did.<p>I have a childhood friend whose father taught him about selling. The father's business? Leading wholesale supplier of beer for about 1/4 of a US state. The son got an engineering degree, but he found that by far his best career opportunity was to take over the family business and use what his father taught him about selling, e.g., to small grocery stores, bars, restaurants, vendors at sporting events, etc.<p>I have a friend whose father taught him about selling. The father's business? Killed about 5000 hogs a day, chilled them overnight, cut them into pieces, put the pieces in boxes, put the boxes in 18 wheel refrigerated trucks, drove the trucks from the US Midwest to the US east coast. The selling? The father sat in his office in the Midwest with a head set and a spiral bound notebook and did the final selling. How to teach the son? For a start, when the son was 16, gave him the keys to a nice car and a credit card and sent him, alone, on a <i>selling</i> trip to each of the customers. Later the son started a business and was really good at selling.<p>Again, we're not talking <i>marketing and sales</i> for some business worth $100 billion but selling for some <i>life style</i>, family business.<p>Is there something to teach that is teachable and valuable? Darned right. E.g., in the first case, the son came home and told his dad that he had the order signed but, still, lost it. Why? Once he did get the order, trying for good customer relations, he stayed around the customer's office for a few minutes making small talk. Suddenly the guy who signed the order had some second thoughts. Lesson: When have the signed order, go away, go away nicely, but definitely go away, essentially ASAP.<p>Another lesson? When selling, emphasize your really good customer service. So, for the first order, have something wrong with it, say, some missing parts. When the customer calls, make a heroic effort, maybe drive all night and get there at start of business the next day, and hand deliver the missing parts with apologies. It worked.<p>There's lots of this stuff. If the father is really good at such selling, then there's lots of stuff he can pass down to his son that will work, well enough to be a big help in having the son have a nice standard of living and, e.g., pay full tuition for his children at some B-school where the professors circumvented the challenges of selling by being professors of marketing and sales at a B-school, and I used to be a B-school prof!