Students from the Anderson University College of Business and Economics returned from the Middle Tennessee State University National Tech Sales Competition with awards and valuable networking opportunities.
This was a three-round team selling competition where one student served as sales lead and one student served as tech lead.
The corporate event was sponsored by Oracle, who brought all their own people in to play the roles of buyers and judges. Last year, six students got hired by Oracle out of this event.
A total of 13 universities attended, each bringing two teams. Included were major universities who are powerhouses in the area of sales education with standalone sales centers and multiple full-time staff (eg, University of Florida, LSU, MTSU, University of New Mexico, University of Tampa, etc.).
“You got to love a good David and Goliath story,” AU Professor Bruce Morgan commented in praise of the AU students.
Jacob Morrow and Grant Stevison (pictured above) walked away with First Place and $1,000. They also won the Teamwork Award. Morrow won the top Tech lead award. Our other team consisted of Delaney Smith and Alejandro Perez.
Morrow and Stevison said they pulled some late hours to prepare for the competition, which they feel paid off in the end. They are grateful to ther professors at AU—Drs. Joe Spencer and Bruce Morgan, as well as Rick Moody. They also feel that representatives from Herc Rentals provided valuable assistance, coming into the classroom and staging sales competiitions.
“If you don’t learn how to apply those and the experience to draw from, at the end of the day, you’re just book smart and you’re not actually going to be able to be successful in the real world,” said Morrow, who is majoring in marketing and also finance. “You’re able to immediately be able to integrate the sales skills that you’ve been picking up through your classes. It also gives you a way to test some different sales techniques that you’ve been thinking about in your off time and your studying.”
“Jacob brought an incredible ability to relate and be personable, and keep the conversation calm, and he spoke with confidence—I think that that was key,” said Stevison, who is majoring in marketing and minoring in entrepreneurship. “I think for me, one of the things that helped me be successful was the ability to adapt and adjust, read the room, read the conversation, read the person, and try to adjust based on that, and not being afraid of hearing an objection or hearing ‘no.’”
Stevison feels that the competition boosted his confidence in his ability to sell, overcoming a mindset that, as a marketing student he felt somehow out of place in a sales competition.
“I think it gave me a lot of confidence that this is where God wants me and that I have a talent for this,” Stevison said. “I’m not trying to be cocky when I say that, but I do think that the Lord has allowed this to grow in me, and it’s just further confirmation that this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Also at the conference were 10 other corporate sponsors who participated in five rounds of networking competition, 30 minutes each round.
“You went to a table with a corporate sponsor and two to four other students from other universities and had to push your way to the forefront without being domineering. Quite a balance,” said Morgan, adding that before the competition even started, Oracle scheduled an interview with Morrow.
Morgan also praised alternate Erin Rable for her performance during the networking event.
“She won the Top Personality Hire Award (not a real award, I made it up but once she got over her fears of just approaching a table of people she didn’t know, you couldn’t stop her),” Morgan noted.
Sponsorship Networking
Morgan considers these competitions as being beyond a conventional competition, citing real results the students bring home, citing the example of Morgan getting a lead for a commercial insurance carrier.
He commented, “The Greenville Oracle rep said, ‘all the Anderson students were wonderful.’
The group also got to experience a country songwriters show at the Nashville Symphony, along with some line dancing, which student Delaney Smith excelled at. And of course, when in the Music City, they enjoyed some individual and group karaoke singing.