2008 - Marketing Educators' Association

CURRICULUM STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING PERSONAL SELLING
TRAINING IN A UNIVERSITY BUSINESS PROGRAM
Casey Donoho and Ryan Braasch, Northern Arizona University, W. A. Franke College of Business,
Box 15066, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5066; casey.donoho@nau.edu
A content study was conducted of U.S. AACSB
Business School websites to evaluate the pervasiveness
of Personal Selling and Sales Management
classes in the marketing curriculum as well as
evaluate the types of sales programs offered. The
results show Personal Selling (8 percent) and Sales
Management classes (7 percent) are rarely required
as part of marketing curricula even though a majority
of marketing and business careers start in sales.
The purpose of this research was to evaluate sales
curriculum offerings and to develop a resourceefficient,
academic sales training program beyond
the Personal Selling class within the marketing
curriculum. Typical sales curriculum configurations
are discussed and information on the current state of
professional selling curriculum in business schools
is presented. Our study suggests the most resource
efficient sales program should start with the
development of an academic sales certificate
program.
THE SALES CERTIFICATE
The sales certificate appears to offer a resource
efficient solution to extending the sales curriculum. It
is versatile in its compact form (six to nine semester
units) serving as a concentration in marketing or as
an addition to another functional area of business
(for example, finance students pursuing a career in
financial services or management students pursuing
entrepreneurship). A sales certificate can be a
useful addition to a non-business major such as
communications, hotel and restaurant management,
or music for those that might manage music stores
or music careers. The sales certificate should begin
as a business college option only and gradually
extend to non-business programs as resources are
negotiated.
The sales certificate configuration can start as the
traditional two classes of Personal Selling and Sales
Management. We suggest that the third class be an
internship. Many business schools are starting to
offer several sales courses as part of their curriculum.
Many of these sales courses and certificates do
not require sales internships as part of the courses.
For new graduates, it is difficult to enter the world of
sales without hands-on sales experience.
ABSTRACT
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For those business schools that cannot afford the
resources for a third sales class, a reconfiguration of
the traditional Personal Selling and Sales Management
classes should be considered. If Personal
Selling is the first class then the second class would
combine sales management with a selling
internship.
A second configuration would replace Sales
Management with an advanced selling class that
includes the internship. Required internships would
place sales students with local companies and could
include shadowing a sales representative, participating
in cold calling and prospecting, managing
sales databases, and providing employment
opportunities immediately upon graduation.
A third configuration, for those schools that view
internships as unmanageable, would coordinate the
Personal Selling and Sales Management classes to
role play selling and management situations. This
would provide more control of the sales process
than internships could generally provide.
There are a number of changes that could be made
to the marketing curriculum that could enhance the
effectiveness of the sales certificate through
stronger integrative curriculum efforts: Enhance
business-to-business sales relationships and
organizational buyer behavior in the Distribution
class; expand organizational buyer behavior in the
required Consumer Behavior class; develop sales
and sales management modules in the Marketing
Management class; include sales strategy in the
Promotion class as part of a truly integrated
marketing communica-tions strategy; and/or develop
sales research and forecasting in the Marketing
Research class.
Regardless of the cause of the current sales
curriculum situation, resource efficient solutions are
needed. Our conclusions suggest implementing a
sales certificate and starting with a small, six to nine
unit commitment. As success emerges, first
incrementally within the marketing curriculum and
then within the business curriculum, an expansion to
this important business tool can be made.