This article was contributed by John Reed, Marketing Lecturer within the Cameron School of Business. 

The Department of Marketing in the Cameron School of Business began offering a concentration in professional sales 11 years ago. We were among the early universities offering this concentration, recognizing the need for this training and the many employment opportunities it afforded our students. 

As the program developed and grew, we founded the Center for Sales Excellence & Customer Delight in 2018. Since our sales program and sales center were founded, they have grown to be an important part of CSB and recognized and highly regarded on a national basis. 

Our Sales Center attracts corporate partners seeking top students to recruit into their organizations. We carefully screen potential partners to ensure that they represent great opportunities for our students and are deemed excellent places to work in terms of business practices and how they treat employees. It has proven to be a great match for our students and partners. 

Partners make an annual contribution to the Sales Center, which we invest in creating opportunities for partners and students to engage and to offer our students a range of opportunities to increase their learning, enhance our curriculum, and broaden our exposure. 

Some of our partners sponsor ‘internal’ sales competitions with our students doing roleplays selling their product or service. This provides valuable experience for students and gives a preview of their sales skills to partners. Among local companies, we host competitions for the Hendrick Automotive Group, Enterprise Mobility, and Protocase/45 Drives. 

We also send student teams to compete in national sales competitions where they go up against students from other universities. Each year, we send teams to the National Collegiate Sales Competition and the International Collegiate Sales Competition. These are the largest and most prestigious sales competitions in the world, and our students always represent the school professionally and successfully. This year, we also had a team of students compete in the Daniels Fund National Ethics Case Competition. 

We also invest in curriculum development. To build programs to help our students get hands-on experience with state-of-the-art sales technology, we partner with Zoom Info, Levitate (Coffee CRM), REVGEN (advanced Business Development Training Program), and Copient.ai (AI-driven sales training). 

We also continue to invest in a Speaker Series, where we brought in Dr. Amy Cuddy. Her Ted Talk “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are” has over 70 million views on YouTube and she presented to over 200 attendees at UNCW’s Lumina Theater. More recently, leading sales trainer Tom Abbott joined us for one of our regular Sales Forum Webinars. 

Finally, we provide our partners with a Resume Book each semester with digital resumes for our sales students (developed with the help of the CSB Career Center) and host a Sales Career Fair each semester for our partners and students seeking internships or full-time post-graduation employment. 

Out Sales Advisory Board, comprised of local and regional sales leaders, helps us with curriculum development, classroom speaking engagements, and active participation with our Sales Club. 

We are a full member of the University Sales Center Alliance, a major accrediting organization with strict membership requirements and we’re consistently ranked among the Top 100 Sales Programs by the Sales Education Foundation. 

All of these things have resulted in incredible opportunities for our students for internships, full-time employment, and continued professional growth and development. We have an active Sales Club for current students and a UNCW Sales Alumni Group for past graduates. 

While we’ve accomplished a lot in the past eight years, we continue to work to build and enhance our program. We’re incredibly excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for us and our students.