Top B-school students lack sales acumen, customer focus:survey

Highlighting huge talent gap, a survey has revealed that a significant percentage of students from top business schools in India score below the industry standards in terms of sales acumen and customer focus.
The study revealed that 35 per cent of students in tier I colleges and 60 per cent of tier II college students score below the Industry standard in sales acumen.
Moreover, 40 per cent of students in tier I colleges and 48 per cent of tier II college students score below industry standard in terms of customer focus.
Around 2,500 students across more than 80 B-schools in India were included in the study conducted by Jombay -- a talent assessment and analytics platform.

The tier I colleges include Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Kolkata, IIM Lucknow, IIM Bangalore, Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Faculty of Management Studies (FMS).
Tier II colleges include Delhi School of Economics, Symbiosis Institute of International Business, Amity University, IGNOU (Delhi), Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), BITS-Pilani, and 70 other colleges.

The study further noted that in tier I colleges, 55 per cent students score lower than industry expectations on emotional control.
Emotional control, stress tolerance and foresight are training areas for tier II colleges too, but here, the students fall short by 63 per cent, 55 per cent, 55 per cent respectively.

Additionally, at least 50 per cent students score lower than industry standards in the tier II colleges on people understanding, helpfulness and smart problem solving, the report noted.