College of Business sales program earns distinction

by Joe King

The Northern Illinois University College of Business long has boasted that it has one of the premier sales training programs in the land.

Now it has the paperwork to back up that claim.

The Chicago-based Professional Society for Sales and Marketing Training (SMT) has notified the Professional Sales Program in the college's Department of Marketing that it is the first collegiate sales training program to be certified by that organization.

"This places the program in the top 5 percent across the country," said Renie McClay, who sits on the SMT board of directors and was part of the accreditation team. McClay is the national training and development manager for Pactive, based in Lake Forest.

"This is wonderful external validation for our program," said Professor Dan Weilbaker, who has helped shape the program for more than 10 years. "Academics are often accused of doing their own thing regardless of the needs of business, but this accreditation singles us out as providing precisely the type of education students need to enter the field of sales."

Created in 1989, the Professional Sales Program answered a need identified by the college's Board of Executive Advisors: to provide better-trained, entry-level sales people. Only the second of its kind in the nation, the program quickly developed a reputation for excellence. Today, up to 300 students a year enroll in parts of the course, and about 75 a year complete the three-class sales curriculum.

The evaluators from SMT examined the program's curriculum, faculty and facility. While they were impressed by all three, it was the facility's Sales Training Suite that impressed them the most. That facility allows up to three teams to conduct buyer-seller role plays outside of the classroom while being monitored by the professor remotely.

"It is the best facility I have seen, state-of-the-art," McClay said. "I have never seen another - campus or corporate - that compares."

That facility is considered one of the technological highlights of the college's new home, Barsema Hall.

It consists of two mock offices, each equipped with three small video cameras and a microphone that allow the proceedings to be beamed to a nearby classroom. The Marketing Department's adjacent conference room is similarly equipped, allowing students to role-play large group presentations that can be monitored remotely. All sessions are videotaped for later review, and students can conduct and tape practice sessions in each of the rooms.

"The role plays are an integral part of all three classes in the sales curriculum, and this facility creates a much more realistic atmosphere than in the past when they had to attempt one-on-one presentations in front of 20 or more classmates," Weilbaker said.

The Professional Sales Program's facilities also include a sales resource lab where students can find books and magazines devoted to sales, corporate training videos and work stations where they can participate in computerized, interactive sales training exercises.

While the facility was eye-catching, the faculty - Weilbaker, professor Rick Ridnour and instructor Ed Bratta - also drew high praise. All three have well-established credentials in both the business world and in academe.

"They are extremely well-qualified. They aren't just marketing professors teaching a sales class. They are plugged into the profession," McClay said.

Those attributes have impressed others, too. In recent years, the program was featured by Selling Power Magazine in a story on "Fifteen Incubators for Greatness," and was singled out by Sales and Marketing Magazine as one of the top six schools in the nation for businesses looking to recruit top salespeople.

"The Professional Sales Program has long been a center of excellence within the college, and it is very worthy of this recognition," said David Graf, dean of the college. "This accreditation confirms something that we have long known: the professional sales program does an excellent job of preparing our students for challenges that come with a career in sales in today's competitive business world."

11/18/2002