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

Abstract

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.

A Critical Review of the Literature for Sales Educators 2.0

“…Exposing students to experiential learning activities is, in many ways, the most critical curricular approach sought by recruiting firms (Spiller et al, 2020). Surprisingly, while there were 37 sales articles categorized primarily as experiential learning in our data set (31.1%), only two designated primarily as experiential learning were published in JME , the lowest relative to the journals examined.…”

“…In the current special issue, three articles offer insight into curricular assessment and offer future research needs. Spiller et al (2020) encourage research that explores pedagogical choices, teaching practices, and perspectives on the curriculum to help universities enhance or launch a sales program. Chakar et al (2020) argue that research is needed that investigates the activities of sales center directors and gain deeper insights into thought leadership.…”

“…From the viewpoint of recruiters, acquiring and maintaining a high-quality and committed sales force has traditionally been one of their most critical areas of need (Spiller et al, 2020). In response, universities have increasingly offering curricula designed to attract, maintain, and graduate professionally trained sales students (Chakar et al, 2020).…”

“…We thus provide an extensive set of classroom implementable research for instructor reference and academic inquiry (see Table 4). Last, we offer concluding thoughts on where sales education is going, future research opportunities, and what instructors (and businesses) can do to prepare the next generation of sales graduates (Chakar et al, 2020; Hammond, 2020; Spiller et al, 2020). How the COVID-19 pandemic will affect sales education is especially intriguing.…”

Do Technology-Based Sales Support Materials Make a Difference in Personal Selling? The Impact of Technology Usage by Gender in the Personal Selling Process

“…Therefore, pedagogical guidance regarding sales and technology is needed (Cummins et al, 2013; O. C. Ferrell & Ferrell, 2020; Loe & Inks, 2014; Spiller et al, 2019).…”