Within the past few years I have found myself in a management position and I learned very quickly that there is a very significant difference between a college education and a career education.  College taught me many very important things, such as developing Marketing proposals and figuring out business statistics.  The thing that it lacked however were many of the very important skills that are only learned by experience and by having certain business skills imparted by more experienced and success business people.  For example, here are some skills that I never learned in school: the value of sending a bottle of wine to a presenter from out of town after their successful presention to my customers…or how to manage 80+ emails during a day filled with interuptions and meetings…or even what it looks like to hold a social dinner with their employee’s and still maintain the employee/boss relationship.  These are very valuable things.

With my current position as Sales Manager, I now have the responsibility of training the next round of managers within our Management Trainee program.  I try to spend a significant amount of time working with them on all of the things that will make them successful with the customer base, things like processes for follow up.  I have deceided to start this blog so I can have a forum in which to get my thoughts out and organized, and hopefully someone will gain some insight along the way.