If the goal is to be an entrepreneur, given the digital age we live in, what skills should sales professionals develop?

All successful sales come from the customer realizing that something of great value is being provided. Therefore, to be an entrepreneur, a person should be searching for something that many people will assess as having great value. In other words, look for something you can design once, and sell over and over again to many people. Techniques such as cold calling may be more or less efficient than the "new" techniques such as social media, mobile marketing, and so on. But none of that matters until you have a product/service that resonates with customers. As a salesperson, you are used to being told "Sell what you have." But as an entrepreneur, you need to be much more interested in "Having what sells."

Copywriting, Sales, Advertising, Marketing
Everything inside and outside of a business revolves around this. Management is important, but marketing trumps everything.
Don't stop taking massive action.
Best of Luck,
Michael T. Irvin
michaelirvin.net
My books are available exclusively through Amazon Books. Check out my book "Copywriting Blackbook of Secrets"
Copywriting, Startups, Internet Entrepreneur, Online Marketing, Making Money

To be an entrepreneur successfully is essentially to be a great communicator and motivator of people, to identify great opportunities and relentlessly pursue them while enlisting other smart people to join you in the adventure.

- I learned more about sales, human psychology and human nature from selling cutlery door-to-door in high-school than just about anything else ( i know sounds crazy)

- The basic notions of how to convince, motivate and "sell" people will apply no matter what technologies come along - so these are crucial

- But if you don't have a strong command of basic technological tools necessary to build a business, the struggle will be harder (email, CRM, CMS, Demand-Gen, Analytics, and the world of software development - Lean, Agile, Scrum, etc)

"Cold calling is dead"

Sure. But look deep inside any major B2B SaaS startup and you'll find a ratio of sales people to developers of about 2:1

So if these companies aren't cold calling, what are they doing?

Well - they are making calls. They're doing a LOT of outbound sales calls actually. The difference is, they aren't cold. They're warm, they were developed through relationship development and referrals.

C++ developers will never feel comfortable picking up the phone and making 10 high quality calls a day, which means the sales professional is as valuable in tech startups as ever.

Because we know that sales skills are critical to scale a tech startup, your personal development should focus on the skills required for the earlier stages of a startup.

Good marketing (copywriting being 90% of what you'll need to master), public speaking, project management (agile literacy), technical literacy.

Happy to chat further on a call

Emotional Intelligence. Outsourcing can handle many headaches that take away from the actual craft of the Entrepreneur.
Focusing on Emotional Intelligence and understanding Human needs and Motivation is the skillset that will feed you for life.
It will also allow you to seamlessly transition into learning any other necessary skill in this digital age with ease because these emotional concepts govern ALL technical/practical techniques from copywriting - advertising to customer retention - lead generation and so forth.

He who knows "How To" is always employed by he who knows "WHY."
Concepts like emotion and motivation are not as sexy as practical strategies yet they are what every strategy is built upon.

Absolutely become a great manager, define the operations you must carry out and when, build an inexpensive outsourcing team to handle the "How To," and focus working ON your business and not so much IN it. :)