Until quite recently, business education might have been perfectly justified in skipping over sales. The model salesperson was two parts personality and one part product knowledge. The job was to carry a bag, get a foot in the door, and talk up your offering’s features and benefits. Perhaps a formal sales education couldn’t add much to that. Product knowledge was unique to a company and therefore handled by internal training. People skills weren’t considered teachable in any conventional sense. Selling was something to be learned by doing. As with riding a bicycle, you could read about it, but real knowledge came from trying, failing, and trying again.