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Education: MSSSB Launch
MSSSB launch
The Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body (MSSSB) has just launched the new national Standards in Marketing and Sales. The event at The Royal Society of Arts in London attracted scores of marketing and sales professionals who joined the meeting to celebrate the launch of the new Standards.
The MSSSB, accredited by the DfES, has been working since 2001 to establish these comprehensive new national marketing and sales Standards. They are designed not only to guide educational course and qualification construction but also to provide the basis for job descriptions, appraisals and personal development programmes in all marketing and sales organisations.
In his address, Sir Paul Judge, Chair of the Marketing Standards Body, emphasised the size of the professions with the estimate of 545,000 marketing professionals and 766,000 sales professionals in the UK, a total of more than five times the number of accountants. He said, "The profession makes a huge contribution to the national economy but needs to continue to raise its professionalism, especially in the light of the rapid changes in areas such as corporate responsibility, technology and regulatory impact. The Standards give organisations a template to evaluate and improve all of their key marketing and sales roles in order to remain competitive."
Beth Rogers, Chair of the Sales National Committee, stressed that "There are far too many anecdotes about sales malpractice that circulate in our community despite the hard work of many professional sales people. The production of the new national Standards is a significant step in helping to build the professionalism and boost the image of the sales community".
Teri Walker from Xerox provided a convincing case study of how her company is using the Standards to unify the understanding and practice of marketing and sales roles across 17 European countries.
Sir Digby Jones, former Director General of the CBI, summarised the importance of the MSSSB project and said "Marketing and sales skills are instrumental in helping increase the value of products and services and enable British businesses to better equip themselves in this day of fierce global competition".
Chahid Fourali, Head of MSSSB, speaking about the launch said, "The co-operation of everyone involved in marketing and sales will ensure that we can disseminate these world-class professional benchmarks to maximise professional practice and to influence government, education providers and all those organisations which depend on marketing and selling skills."
13 September 2006