Recruiting Sales Students: The Value of Professionals in the Classroom

Based on the industry need to hire qualified salespeople, a call to expand sales education at universities has been continuously echoed. This article provides an updated overview of the sales education landscape in the United States and offers insight into both the curriculum offerings and the practices of marketing educators who teach sales courses at colleges and universities with sales programs. This research assesses the current state of sales education by critically evaluating recently published sales education literature, reviewing university websites of the University Sales Center Alliance members located in the United States, surveying professors who are members of the Sales Educators Foundation and/or the University Sales Center Alliance, and examining sales course syllabi of sales faculty. This article describes the findings of these research investigations. Understanding the pedagogical choices, teaching practices and perspectives on curriculum of the educators of leading sales programs is valuable to those educators contemplating launching a sales program at their respective universities.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sales Education in the United States: Perspectives on Curriculum and Teaching Practices

Spiller

Kim

Aitken

2019

“…These articles primarily survey the undergraduate student population. For example, Rippé et al (2018) survey online and in-person sales students to assess the value of using sales steps to impact sales enrollment growth; and Nielson and Cummins (2019) survey students to show that high-quality classroom presentations, in contrast to average or low-quality presentations by recruiting firms, improve intent to pursue specific sales employment. Also present in the literature are surveys of high school students assessing the messaging that can best drive intent to pursue sales enrollment (Inks & Avila, 2018).…”

Section: Discussion Of General Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While interest in sales research has grown relative to JME ’s first 34 years in existence, researchers have only tapped the surface of how to improve sales education and enhance student interest in sales as a career (Deeter-Schmelz & Peltier, 2019; Hammond, 2020; Nielson & Cummins, 2019). To address this issue, JME released a second Special Issue on Sales Education and Training 2.0 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Review of the Literature for Sales Educators 2.0

Cummins

Nielson

Peltier

et al. 2020

Self Cite

In this article, we review the recent expansion within the sales education literature from five primary journals and the business literature at large. The five primary journals are the Journal of Marketing Education, Marketing Education Review, Journal for the Advancement of Marketing Education, Journal of Education for Business, and the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. Of the 119 identified articles published in the past 15 years, experiential learning, career development, and assessment were the three most prominent topics. Of these, 69% were published after the Cummins et al. review article “A Critical Review of the Literature for Sales Educator,” which was published in Journal of Marketing Education as a means of expanding sales education research. Future research opportunities in sales education are offered with suggested hypotheses for investigation. A reference table of classroom innovations is provided as an easy guide to instructors seeking vetted pedagogical enhancements.

“…In fact, there is evidence that sales engineers do not see themselves as salespeople and define their professional identity differently from those working exclusively in sales (Darr, 2000). Taking this nuance into account while designing promotion tactics for sales classes geared toward engineering students may be necessary, as work with business students has shown that the quality of in-class presentations greatly affects its effectiveness (Nielson & Cummins, 2019).…”

Section: Conclusion and Implications For Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recent work is addressing this gap (e.g., Peltier et al 2014), but the focus remains on intent and stated interest. For example, a rich stream of work is linking classroom experiences with the stated intent to pursue a sales career (e.g., Cummins et al, 2015; Nielson & Cummins 2019; Peltier et al 2014). One contribution of our study is that we investigate stated interest and actual choice for sales classes concurrently.…”

Section: Hypotheses Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sales Education for Engineering Students: What Drives Interest and Choice?

Scott

Beuk

2020

Universities increasingly make their sales curriculum available for groups other than dedicated sales students. This study investigates engineering students’ drivers that predict interest in sales certification, as well as drivers that predict actual choice for a sales curriculum. We focus on engineering students ( n = 204) and contrast our findings with business students ( n = 179). Based on social cognitive theory, we investigate how personality (Big Five personality factors and Trait Competitiveness), ability (ACT, GPA, and Academic Self-Efficacy), and social factors (role models, and perception of salespersons) affect interest and choice. Our results indicate that although the regression models explain a reasonable amount of variance, models that work for business students do not work equally well for engineering students. Also, our analysis reveals that factors that explain interest do not explain actual choice, and vice versa. In addition, we uncover subtle gender difference when it comes to actual choice for a sales curriculum. Finally, the benefits that engineering students perceive of sales certification differ primarily based on whether students are taking sales classes, and not on degree sought.