More than 130 top sales students from 68 universities across the United States and Canada participated in the 23rd annual National Collegiate Sales Competition hosted by Kennesaw State University’s Michael J. Coles College of Business. Held March 6-8, the all-digital event featured two students from each university putting their skills to the test in 20 minute one-on-one sales call simulations. Each role play student sold Gartner’s services to a Chief Information Officer. The four individual role play winners were 1st Pooja Chafekar, Bradley University; 2nd Natalie Zito, Bradley University; 3rd Adam Sticker, Kennesaw State University; and 4th Kalila Jeffrey, Asbury University. McCoy College students, Emily Lucas and Richard Price, both placed in the quarterfinals of the competition.
In addition to the role play competition, another important part of each year’s NCSC is the career fair. Fortune 500 companies such as Aflac, Becton Dickinson, Henry Schein, and Gartner headlined a career fair that connected them with 492 qualified candidates from collegiate sales programs around the world. The Speed Selling competition is a 90-second sale from each student to eleven different platinum, gold, and silver sponsors. The students have to sell why they would be a good employee of that company. Texas State won three of the eleven speed selling awards. The speed selling team included Kamryn Allen, Caden Mays, and Izabelle Walter. Kamryn Allen won all three individual awards. The faculty coach for both sales teams was Vicki West, Director of the Center for Professional Sales.
The National Collegiate Sales Competition worked with lead sponsor Gartner, a leading research and advisory firm, to implement the technology to run an all-virtual NCSC. Gartner sent out more than 600 unique WebEx invitations to more than 400 participants worldwide, provided 20 members of their corporate team to act as buyers in the sales roleplays, and maintained the back-end technology running the competition.
