UL Marketing Majors Excel in National Sales Competition

UL Marketing majors Hannah Darby and Jordan Johnson recently put the University of Louisiana on the national map as a force to be reckoned with at the 2011 Russ Berrie Institute National Sales Challenge, the second largest national collegiate student sales competition, in New Jersey.  The two-person team ranked 10th overall in a field of 30 universities with 60 student competitors from across the United States.  Darby’s performance earned her a 6th place overall individual ranking while Johnson ranked 20th overall.  The two were trained by Dr. Duleep Delpechitre, Assistant Professor of Marketing at UL.

In mid-November, the Russ Berrie Institute for Professional Sales (RBI) at William Paterson University’s Christos M. Cotsakos College of Business hosted the three-day event where top sales students from across the country met with representatives from major corporations for an exciting sales competition designed to hone students’ sales skills, help students network with executives from a wide range of companies, and allow sponsoring companies to meet and evaluate up-and-coming sales leaders.

The two-part competition included a sales call role play and a speed selling component.  For the roll play, students engaged in a 15-minute sales call role-play with a business executive. The role-play was evaluated and scored by a group of business executive judges on various aspects of the sales call, including approach, overall communication effectiveness, and the student’s ability to gather information, identify needs, provide information, present solutions, resolve concerns, and gain a commitment.

The speed selling component required students to create and deliver a two-minute sales pitch highlighting the reasons he or she should be hired by the executive. A one-minute question and answer session followed; then, the student moved on to the next executive presenting the same pitch to a total of six different executives.

The team’s performance created a curiosity among business executives as well as participating university faculty members and students about this “small” school from a “small” town in Louisiana.  Executives from some of the multinational corporations plan to visit UL to learn more about the university’s sales program.

In addition to UL Lafayette, some of the 30 universities that participated included Virginia Tech, Florida State, Baylor, University of San Francisco, Purdue, Kennesaw State, and Temple.  UL’s Darby placed 4th in the sales call role play and 13th in the speed selling.  Johnson placed 19th in the sales call role play and 15th in the speed selling.  Darby and Johnson received job offers from several of the multinational corporations that participated in the program.  Both are graduating from UL Lafayette in December.