Every year, nearly 7 lakh students graduate in various business and management courses including BBA, MBA, PGDM etc. from over 2000 business schools and management studies institutions. According to various reports, many of these graduates are not employable due to various reasons, which also led to shutting down of several institutions across the country.

However, the good news is that, despite the current pandemic crisis, the placement of India’s management school graduates touched an eight-year high in 2019-20. That means more organisations are ready to hire management graduates. At the same time, the employability of the graduates is a real concern, especially when digital transformation is in full swing and for organisations the complete focus is on skills.

To build future-ready management graduates, MeritTrac launched Extended Curriculum Program (ECP). It offers supplementary courses in collaboration with educational institutions to improve the employability skills of the students. For students from management and business stream, sales effectiveness and data analytics for managerial courses have been designed. Followings are the details of these courses –

Sales Effectiveness

Sales is a unique profession, which is part of all the organisations across industries and sectors. It is a dynamic profession too. Though the core is to sell product and service, the nature and strategies in the sales domain are changing. It imperative for all the sales staff to be agile in order to succeed in their profession. This course prepares the students in the commerce and business streams to a future-ready sales professional.

Features of the Program

• Offers activity-based sales training to simulate the on-field experience
• 20+ hours of live lectures by industry experts from varied domains
• Modern age case-study based learning to bring in relevance
• The only program to teach customer-centric, value-based sales

Learning Outcomes

• Mastering art of sales: Easier than (mis)understood
• Champion value selling than product selling
• Winning every round of negotiation
• How to analyse market/ product/ competition/ customer
• Being a fluent communicator: listening/ questioning/ handling objections
• Powering the art of trust-based relationships
• Essentials of grooming & planning

Job Mapping

• 70% of companies are struggling to find skilled & trained sales professionals and India has the potential to create 10 million sales jobs in the next three years
• Hiring sectors in next 3-5 years will be onsumer goods (FMCG and consumer durables), e-commerce, retail, banking&insurance
• More than 225,000 active jobs available on job portals like Naukri, Shine, Glassdoor, Indeed etc
• Job Roles: Sales Manager, Area Sales Manager, Territory Sales In-charge, Business Development Manager, Key Account Manager, Relationship Manager
• Salary bands: A sales professional with no experience earns INR 4-8 lakh p.a. A mid-level professional earn INR 10-15 lakh p.a., while more experienced professionals earn INR 15-20 lakh p.a. Attractive incentives can increase the salary manifold in a few years.

ANALYTICS FOR MANAGERS

We are living in the age of data – it is the king and kingmaker. Demand for data analytics is constantly increasing as more companies are moving towards exploring the possibilities of big data. Also, the payout for candidates is higher than any other profession. A manager with data analytics skill can shine in his/her profession and contribute a lot to the organization. With this supplementary course, the management students get all the required knowledge in data science to apply in the workplace.

Features of the Program

• 20+ real-life case studies across different domains and industry
• 50+ hours of live lectures through industry experts
• 100+ hours of online content
• Assignments and Capstone projects across different domains and industry
• Completely hands-on program

Learning Outcomes

• Gain expert level understanding of data science and analytics, including concepts and applicability
• Learn about analytics and its impact on business outcomes
• Learn how functions – numeric, character, date and time – are typically used for data manipulation and analysis
• Understand the different types of chart options, including scatter plots, line charts, column plots, bubble charts etc
• Be able to use appropriate descriptive statistics to summarize information in data and to generate insights
• Understand how linear regression models work and how they are applied to business problems
• Learn how to build and design business data stories

Job Mapping

• Business Analyticshas been ranked among the top emerging jobs on LinkedIn
• Hiring sectors in the next 3-5 years: All sectors will hire candidates who are experts in business analytics
• More than INR 80,000 active jobs available on portals like Naukri, Shine, Glassdoor, Indeed
• Job Roles: Business Analyst, Business/Marketing/Operations/Retail Analytics Manager, Business Intelligence
• Salary bands: A business analytics professional with no experience earns INR 5 lakh p.a., 2-5 years’ experience earns INR 8-10 lakh p.a., while for 6-8 years it would be INR 12-18 lakh p.a.

The rapid development of technology is driving the organizations to enhance their business and thereby registering sustained growth. The profession of sales is getting modernised with more automation and digital tools, that redefines the nature of sales. In the management and business development field, the data analytics skill is getting prominence. A new role of business intelligence has emerged, that accommodates data analysts alone.

The training as part of ECP ensures the business and management students acquire the necessary data skills and prepares them to outsmart other candidates at the workplace.