The Center for Professional Sales at the Naveen Jindal School of Management, which marks its 10-year anniversary this year, recently hosted alumni, supporters, and students at the Sales Leadership Summit.
The one-day event was held April 6 in Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center. Topics were targeted for sales directors, sales managers, and salespeople looking to move into sales leadership roles.
Speakers Emphasize Belonging
Best-selling author Robert Ellington, associate director for Global Diversity Equity Inclusion at Eli Lilly and Company, was one of two keynote speakers. His presentation, “Elements of Inclusions and Belonging,” opened the summit.
The topic of keynote speaker Ted McKenna’s presentation was “The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision.” He is co-author of the book by the same title along with Matthew Dixon. The two are co-founders of DCM Insights, a company that helps organizations better understand changing customer behaviors.
Ellington outlined Eli Lilly’s mission to embed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in everything the company does. One of the most important aspects of that is to create a workplace where all people feel they belong, or creating psychological safety. Ellington stressed the importance of creating an atmosphere where introverts are not afraid to speak up.
“When you include everyone,” he said, “there is power in that.”
Senior directors in Eli Lilly lead individual employee resource groups (ERG) that have a monthly cultural awareness program. In 2015, the company began a research study called the Women’s Journey. The program gave the company insights into the lived experiences of women in the workplace. The study was followed by the African-American Journey and others. This year, it is the Enable Journey, which is focused on the disabled.
Ellington challenged the audience to discuss ways they can do similar things at their place of work or school.
“One way we could do that on campus is to create more clubs specifically for a (variety) of groups,” said JSOM student, Jules Bouhadana, who will graduate in May with a BS in marketing. “We also could find ways to promote the groups so that people are aware of them.”
JSOM alumna, Brittany Knowles, BS’18, is employed as Lifecycle and Customer Success Manager at British Telecom. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is something the company is already addressing.
“They have offices and people all over the world, so they are already doing things (related to DEI),” said Knowles, who earned a bachelor’s in marketing at the Jindal School. “They do virtual events to connect people and they also have ERG’s.”
In his lunchtime keynote presentation, McKenna discussed results the results of a study his company undertook at the beginning of the pandemic. The research, which is also the subject of his book, “The JOLT Effect,” considered ways to overcome indecision, considering more than 8,000 variables on the side of the buyer and the seller. One of the biggest issues the study found is that buyers who hesitate are often afraid of failing.
“For most companies, 40-50% of deals are lost due to indecision,” he said. “That could be higher for some companies.”
JOLT is an acronym for four behaviors high performers use to help customers make a decision to buy.
- Judging the level of indecision.
- Offering a recommendation. Narrowing the options and then recommending what they believe would be best.
- Limiting the exploration. Beyond a certain point of asking for more information, the customer is engaging in analysis paralysis. To limit their exploration the salespersons needs trusted and considered to be the expert.
- Taking risks off the table. Managing expectations early on and then giving them a safety net.
Witnesses to and Catalysts of Sales Program’s Growth
Dr. Howard Dover, PhD’08, MS’08, a clinical professor in the Marketing Area at the Jindal School, has been witness to the center’s launch, growth and evolution over the past decade. He joined the faculty in the fall of 2012, which was the first semester that a professional sales curriculum was taught at UT Dallas. The Center was then formally launched at a breakfast in October 2013.
“In that first semester we had one section of Advanced Professional Sales in the fall and one section of Introduction to Professional Selling each semester,” he said. “We now have six to eight sections of the introductory course each semester and the advanced course is taught every semester. We have Digital Prospecting each semester and courses in Principles of Category Management. When we started, most of our corporate engagement was done in the classroom. Now we host six to seven major events each school year. Those events include hundreds of corporate guests and judges and hundreds of students.”
In the first few years of the sales program, students would be asked which corporate partnerships they would like for him to pursue. Now, students are able to choose between many of the top companies to work for in sales.
The Sales Leadership Summit is one of several events hosted by the center every year that draw Jindal alumni back to campus. Not only is attending similar events helpful for their careers, alumni said they enjoy the opportunity to return to their alma mater.
Asha Andrews, BS’15, a senior solutions consultant for Adobe, graduated from JSOM with a BS in marketing with a concentration in sales. Sales was not always a career option she had considered.
“Jindal launched my sales career,” she said. “I met professor Dover by chance and he asked me if I would be interested in sales. It took some convincing, but it unlocked a possibility I didn’t know existed. And I love being here. Coming to the school that gave so much to me re-ignites what made me fall in love with sales.”
Abigail Wollman, BS’22, who graduated from the Jindal School with a BS in marketing, is now an account manager with Southwest Airlines. She was the first person in her role there to be hired right out of college.
“The sales program here is phenomenal,” she said. “When I finished, other students told me they could see how my confidence had grown. Events such as this one are important for meeting other people in sales and networking. It is nice to return.”
The program has continued to grow during the past 10 years, with some interesting changes recently.
“We have expanded our use of sales technology tools including conversation intelligence, sales enablement platforms, social selling tools and predictive personality artificial intelligence,” Dover said. “We are currently evaluating the impact of this model by measuring the effectiveness of our alumni in the field. We also are currently beta testing several artificial intelligence tools this year with a goal to make them standard during the next academic year.”
Semira Amirpour, a professor of instruction in the Marketing Area at the Jindal School, teaches most of the Introduction to Professional Sales (MKT 3330) courses and has been on the faculty for most of the decade, having joined UT Dallas in August 2013.
“It has been incredible to be part of this great journey and to witness the growth of the program,” she said. “In the past decade, the sales program has produced many successful professionals who have gone on to make a significant impact in their respective industries. Overall, the success of the sales program is a testament to the program’s commitment to providing students with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the competitive field of sales.”
The center’s 10-year anniversary will be celebrated with a Spring Award Dinner May 5.
With more than $1 million in endowments, the center has raised more than $1.5 million over its history and provided more than $250,000 in scholarships.
