William Paterson Programs Upgrading Performance & Perception of Sales

William Paterson University, through its Russ Berrie Institute for Professional Sales, is quickly establishing itself as a keystone for the professional sales industry.

 

Interactive Sales Labs Utilized For Corporate Learning

The school broke new ground in the fall of 2005 when it became the first AACSB accredited institution in the country to offer a separate Bachelor of Science in Professional Sales. Now the Wayne, NJ-based school is raising the bar again with plans to add an Executive Master of Science in Sales Leadership by 2009.
The University’s Russ Berrie Institute (RBI) for Professional Sales has built an interactive sales laboratory, which features simulated sales environments. Replicating conference rooms to corner offices, the simulations feature one-way mirrors to provide instructors with live viewing as well as plasma screens to offer instant review opportunity.
This advanced audio/video equipment is used to help students track their progress on role-playing and sales presentation skills. As part of the program, each student graduates with an E-Portfolio on DVD containing multiple samples of their role-plays and written work.
This behavioral-based learning approach has proven to be very beneficial for the first round of students who have passed through the program, according to David Reid, the newly appointed Executive Director of RBI. “Success in sales is really much more dependent on what you do, not just what you know,” Reid says, “We designed the program to be a hands-on experience environment based on real world selling experiences.”
The program, which is part of the University's Christos M. Cotsakos College of Business, has already graduated 7 students with a bachelor’s degree in professional sales. There are approximately 250 students taking part in the sales program, with 35 majors and another 20 who have chosen the sales program as their minor. As a relatively new department, Reid says the enrollment has been capped more by limits on class size than interest from the student body.
He attributes a large part of the success of the program to its understanding that sales is not a profession that can be taught from a text-book. “All of our faculty, myself included, have extensive experience in the business world and we apply that to every part of the program,” Reid says. The program’s curriculum reflects that real-world connection, with courses including key account management, value selling, sales forecasting, and negotiations.

Practicing What They Preach
The interactive lab and behavior-based curriculum offered at RBI has also proven to be an attractive environment for many large corporations who have tapped into the Institute for training, assessment programs and consulting. A sample of the companies who have taken advantage of RBI’s services include Pepsi, Sony, Russ Berrie Company, Cardinal International, and Becton Dickinson. “We have had a lot of companies that utilize the lab environment and others that enlist our staff for ongoing consulting projects,” Reid says.
A key differentiator of the RBI corporate training programs is a follow-through component after 21-, 60- and 90-days to gauge if there has really been behavioral change from the sales team. “Because we require the participants to ‘step on the scale’ after the training has taken place, we typically see significant performance improvements across the board.”
With its own base of corporate clients, RBI is practicing what it preaches when it comes to sales training, with its team of sales performance consultants utilizing Salesforce.com and sampling other tools from the AppExchange program. “Our own team is definitely using these tools. If we expect our students to be versed in CRM and Sales Force Automation tools, then we want our own people to be using them when they interact with our corporate customers.”

Selling The Profession
An underpinning of every course and program at RBI is to achieve its mission to “elevate and advance the profession of sales,” and Reid is confident the program is fulfilling that vision of the program’s namesake. “Russ Berrie’s dream was to elevate the profession of sales as an honorable profession. As a successful executive who was personally involved in sales throughout his own career, he wanted to introduce sales to young people and have them trained the right way,” Reid says.
Based on current demographic trends, he says there is a growing demand for well-trained sales professionals. “When you consider the graying of the sales force that is currently taking place, there is a real demand for talent,” Reid says.
As evidence of the trend, he says there have been more requests from corporations for internships than they can fulfill. “We have had some graduates who have stepped right into account executive positions at major corporations, where they would have historically had to start as a trainee.” The strong demand for sales talent has driven the average starting salary for RBI graduates to an impressive $60,000.
In addition to its educational and corporate training programs, RBI is also planning other outreach efforts to support its mission statement of elevating the sales profession.
One step towards that goal will be reviving the Sales Hall of Fame, which was created in the 1980s by Victor Kiam and Sales Executives of New York as a way to recognize and honor exceptional sales professionals. RBI will construct a physical Sales Hall of Fame containing donated materials from past inductees and is planning a new event for future inductees in the Spring of 2008.
Another communications tool for promoting best practices in the sales profession will be RBI’s launch of a quarterly Sales Review publication, featuring research and articles presented in a format aimed at practitioners.

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