Business seniors Dave Goodmark (left), management major/professional selling minor, and Brenton Keyes (right), management major, were among the 124 students from 62 universities who competed at the National Collegiate Sales Competition in March at Kennesaw University (GA.) Students engaged in role plays selling Netsuite customer relationship software. Corporate sales managers acted as buyers based on a scenario calling on the students to discover problems at a hypothetical staffing firm that could be solved with the software’s features and benefits. In addition to the role play competition students met with corporate recruiters at the event’s career fair.
TCNJ as a team tied with Illinois State for thirtieth of 57 places (due to ties). Other Northeast universities, with sales programs, that competed included William Patterson (50th place) and the University of Connecticut (34th place). Other Northeast universities that competed included Bryant University (34th place), Widener University (50th place), Plymouth State University (55th place), and Bloomsburg State University (57th place).
Brent placed 43rd and Dave placed 52nd of 105 individual rankings (due to ties).
TCNJ is one of only 30 universities with sales programs (of at least 3 courses). TCNJ’s sales program, a professional selling minor, is the smallest (fifteen students) among these programs. For instance the winning team, the University of Houston has a program with 180 students. Three of the largest programs, Baylor (115 sales majors), Florida State (200 sales majors), and Toledo (413 sales majors) tied for 5th place. Illinois State, which tied with TCNJ for 30th place, has 278 sales majors. TCNJ’s ranking outpaced other large university sales programs, including 38th place University of Akron (100 sales majors), 34th place University of Connecticut (250 sales minors), and Indiana University (175 sales minors).
Among the recruiters at the career fair were Liberty Mutual, Automating Data Processing, Netsuite, Reckitt-Benkiser, State Farm, Assurant, McAfee, Verizon, Aramark, EMC, Sage, Henry Schein Dental, Reynolds and Reynolds, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson and Johnson’s Lifescan division, Vitaulic, TekSystems, Benco Dental, and Georgia-Pacific. Dave will be working for Johnson and Johnson’s Lifescan division and Brent interviewed with many of the above firms. Unlike campus career fairs, the recruiters had key decision makers at the fair, interviewed at the fair, and some made offers at the fair. Also unlike other career fairs, it was the recruiters selling the students, not the other way around due to the elite nature of the students at the fair. Because of TCNJ’s strong showing in past NCSC competitions, firms like ADP and TekSystems now recruit at TCNJ.
Inaugurated in 1999, the National Collegiate Sales Competition (NCSC) is the largest and oldest sales role-play competition in existence. Instituted for the purpose of enhancing the practice and professionalism of the sales profession, the NCSC’s mission remains the same.