Everybody is a salesman. It might look like a sweeping statement at a glance, but if we think about it, it is actually true. Sales are not only restricted to goods and products. Sometimes we have to sell an idea, sometimes we have to sell an image, and more often than not we have to sell ourselves. So anyone who has ever sat for a job interview or applied for a research grant has been a salesman. Therefore, it is not be wrong to say that in order to be successful in life one must be a good salesman.
This is where the importance of good communication skills comes into play. A bad communicator can never be a good salesman. In order to illustrate that I would give the example of Dr Barry Marshall, the discoverer of H-Pylori bacteria for which he received a Nobel prize in 2005. Dr Marshall was a medical doctor. Hence he was not very much aware of how to communicate with the scientific community. Therefore, he had to struggle for ten years to make the scientific community believe that what he has discovered is actually a milestone in the history of medicine. The sufferance he had to go through is evident in some of his written communication with different scientists who were skeptical about his discovery.
What Dr Barry Marshall had to go through is not something out of the blue. Many people have great ideas, great accomplishments and great qualifications but still they do not succeed because of the inability to get the message across. Therefore, in order to avoid this kind of situation I am taking this module, so that I know how to effectively communicate in my professional life.
