A student team from the Naveen Jindal School of Management chalked up impressive placements in the National Sales Collegiate Competition in Kennesaw, Georgia March 8-11. Universities from the U.S., Canada and The Netherlands competed.
Noah Holt, a marketing senior, finished in a second-place tie in the final round of the individual competition, competing against more than 140 students representing 72 schools.
“This is the first time the Jindal School has finished in the final four,” said Dr. Howard Dover, a clinical professor in the Jindal School’s Marketing Area and director of the Center for Professional Sales.
Jindal’s team, which consisted of Holt and Ryan Kaudaissy, an information technology and systems senior, also made a strong showing in the team competition, finishing seventh.
Holt’s and Kaudaissy’s faculty coach was Semiramis (Semira) Amirpour, a professor of instruction in the Jindal School’s Marketing Area. Their student coach was senior marketing student Ayah Elshlali. Judith Alvarado, a marketing junior, was the team’s ambassador. She offered technical support to the competitors before and during the event and engaged with corporate sponsors during the finals as the UTD representative.
“Ambassadors assist with research and roleplay, allowing them to grasp the process of preparing for high-stakes competitions without the pressure of competing,” Amirpour said. “In subsequent semesters, they usually evolve into competitors.”
Knowing at the end of last semester that they would be going to the competition, Holt and the team started preparations in earnest at the beginning of this semester.
“We had a fantastic team,” Holt said. “We have been putting in a lot of long, hard hours to get ready. The role plays I watched and the team’s input were invaluable. It helped me get my bad habits out and replace them with good ones.”
The level of competitors at the NCSC makes practice imperative to success.
“For this competition, rigorous preparation is essential, as each school sends its top-tier competitors,” Amirpour said. “Noah, alongside the rest of the UTD NCSC team, invested weeks of effort in getting ready for the event. All the prep work allowed him to execute a highly precise strategy under intense pressure.”
Founded in 1999, NCSC competition provides students who participate with an opportunity to showcase their skills and strengthen their selling acumen on a national stage through multiple rounds. Each round lasted 20 minutes.
“We acted as individual salespeople in each round,” Holt said. “The only information we had was the name of the company and how we got the appointment. We had to do discovery and identify what their problems were and respond with solutions. An actor played the buyer who kept making objections. Our job was to find answers to overcome the objections.”
While doing that, the students had to meet as many criteria on a rubric as possible in sequential order to earn points.
The most difficult part of the competition for Holt was getting his point across in a “pretty” way. He believes his strongest ability is being a good listener, which helps him ask the right questions and get the information he needs.
The Dallas native plans a career in sales and believes the experience he gained as a student at the Jindal School has given him the tools he needs to be successful.
“It has prepared me in so many ways,” he said. “For one thing, if you work in sales, you need to know about all aspects of a business and I’ve been able to learn that in my time here.”
The Jindal School has participated in the NCSC since Dover’s arrival 12 years ago. Holt used skills learned from the school’s newer sales curriculum based on Gap and Diagnostic selling models.
“We value all national competitions as an outside measure of our curriculum and model at UT Dallas,” Dover said. “A top 10 team performance is our goal with each event. However, when a student is a finalist, like Noah, it is a testament to their personal effort and skill.”
