Steve Cooper, senior sales officer, has trained many top salespeople

Question

Steve Cooper, senior sales officer, has trained many top salespeople in this company, including 14 who have become the top salespersons in their regions and 3 who have won the top salesperson award. Although there is an art to selling, Mr. Cooper’s success at training top salespeople shows that the skills required to become a top salesperson can be both taught and learned.

The argument depends on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Mr. Cooper does not teach the hard-sell method. Nor does he teach the I’ll-be-yourpal method. Instead, he stresses the professional-client relationship.

(B) More than 50% of the people trained by Mr. Cooper went on to become successful salespeople.

(C) One of the successful salespeople who trained under Mr. Cooper was not an accomplished salesperson before learning the Cooper Method.

(D) There is a large and expanding industry dedicated to training salespeople.

(E) There is no one method with which to approach sales; a method that works for one person may not for another person.

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SOnamChaudhary · Answer

C
 If the person alredy knew , then mr cooper method was not the key un making him salesperson !
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abdullah_husain · Answer

Using the negation method, i.e holding the negation of answer choice C to be true - the statement will fall apart. Therefore, the answer is C

Bunuel · Answer

Official Explanation

If the salespeople trained by Mr. Cooper were successful before studying under him, then clearly the argument would be specious. On the other hand, if none of the salespeople were successful before studying under him, then the argument would be strong. However, the argument does not require this strong of a statement in order to be valid. All it needs is one person who profited from the tutelage of Mr. Cooper.  The answer is (C).

Many students have problems with this type of question. They read through the answer-choices and find no significant statements. They may pause at (C) but reject it—thinking that the argument would be deceptive if only one person out of 17 profited from the tutelage of Mr. Cooper. However, the missing premise doesn’t have to make the argument good, just valid.

Sujithz001 · Answer

KarishmaB   GMATNinja   bb   Bunuel

Can anyone please help me understand, why could E not be the answer?

KarishmaB · Answer

Premises:
There is an art to selling.
Cooper has trained many top salespeople in this company.

Conclusion: This shows that the skills required to become a top salesperson can be both taught and learned.

Here is the thing - what if every Cooper trained guy who became a great salesman was already a great salesman? Then the skills may not be transferable. 
Also, what if Cooper trains every salesman? Then he would have obviously trained the good people also. Again, the skills may not be transferable.
Hence we are assuming that here were some people who were not good to start with but Cooper trained them to be good. 
Hence (C) works. 
(C) One of the successful salespeople who trained under Mr. Cooper was not an accomplished salesperson before learning the Cooper Method.

Answer (C)

(E) There is no one method with which to approach sales; a method that works for one person may not for another person.

The argument does not concern itself with whether Mr. Cooper uses different methods for different people or the same method to teach everyone. It only says that the skills can be taught and learned.

Hence (E) is out of scope

saitejareddy8090 · Answer

why not (B)??

If a substantial number of people did not become successful, i.e if they did not learn the method to become accomplished. The statement would break....

Someone please clarify this bit.

guddo · Answer

Steve Cooper, senior sales officer, has trained many top salespeople in this company, including 14 who have become the top salespersons in their regions and 3 who have won the top salesperson award. Although there is an art to selling, Mr. Cooper’s success at training top salespeople shows that the skills required to become a top salesperson can be both taught and learned.

The argument depends on which one of the following assumptions?

The argument says that because Mr. Cooper trained many people who later became top salespeople, this shows that top-level sales skills can be taught and learned.  The key assumption  is that at least some of those people became top salespeople because of what he taught, not because they were already top-level before the training.  Without that link , the conclusion does not follow.

(A) Mr. Cooper does not teach the hard-sell method. Nor does he teach the I’ll-be-yourpal method. Instead, he stresses the professional-client relationship.

This is not required. The argument does not depend on which method he teaches.

(B) More than 50% of the people trained by Mr. Cooper went on to become successful salespeople.

This is not necessary. The argument only needs some evidence that his training helped produce top salespeople, not a majority success rate.

(C) One of the successful salespeople who trained under Mr. Cooper was not an accomplished salesperson before learning the Cooper Method.

This is required. If at least one successful trainee was not already accomplished before the training, then the example can support the idea that important sales skills were taught and learned. Without something like this, the trainees may simply have already had the needed skills.

(D) There is a large and expanding industry dedicated to training salespeople.

This is irrelevant. The size of the training industry says nothing about whether top sales skills can actually be taught.

(E) There is no one method with which to approach sales; a method that works for one person may not for another person.

This is not needed. The conclusion is only that the skills can be taught and learned, not that there is only one way to teach them.

Answer: (C)

KarishmaB · Answer

"skills required to become a top salesperson can be both taught and learned" does not mean that everyone who tries to learn or everyone to whom the teacher tries to teach learns. The skills can be taught means that at least one person did learn - he was not good to begin with and then learned to become a top salesperson. "can be taught" means "it is possible to teach it." It doesn't mean that most people will learn it.

Steve Cooper, senior sales officer, has trained many top salespeople

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Steve Cooper, senior sales officer, has trained many top salespeople

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

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