Reaping Rewards
As any salesman knows, the true measure of success is happy customers.
Nearly 15 years after its creation, the NIU Professional Sales Program can boast of thousands of successful graduates and can produce a laundry list of executives throughout the Chicago region who are only too happy to extol the virtues of the program.
“The skill level of students from the NIU sales program is second to none,” says Bob Page, the section operations manager for Philip Morris USA in Chicago, who for many years has recruited the program for interns and full-time sales people. Page currently sits on the program’s Sales Advisory Board, which recently had to be expanded to 50 members (up from 30) because of demand from companies wishing to be associated with the program.
While its reputation has made it into board rooms, it is perhaps strongest among the recruiters who have made NIU such a popular stop along the recruiting trail for sales people that sales managers are picking up the lingo.
“It has gotten to the point that people have started asking me, ‘when am I going to get my 450 kids (using the shorthand for the Advanced Professional Selling class)?’” says Julie Madsen, a recruiting manager for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. While Madsen graduated from NIU in 1994, it was with a degree in physical education, which proved a short-lived career. Based upon what she sees from the students she recruits, she wishes she had discovered the Professional Sales Program while still in school.
“Kids from other schools come in thinking that the job automatically comes with a company car and an expense account. Students out of the NIU sales program know the real deal. They come in with a real understanding of what it takes to succeed and the importance of building relationships.”
Like Madsen, sales wasn’t Andy Gorski’s (Marketing, ’92) first love as a student –at least not at first. “It wasn’t until I took Professor Ridnour’s class. He proved that being in sales does not mean you are a used car salesman. He presented it as an honorable profession. The program was intense training for a challenging industry. When I graduated, I was much better prepared than my peers who had not had the opportunity to go through the NIU program.”
Gorski too now finds himself in a position to hire salespeople, and NIU is one of his company’s favorite places to recruit. “They come out ready to hit the ground running. It’s a lot easier to teach someone about computers than it is to try to teach them the kind of intuition that they develop through that class.”
Gorski’s classmate, Tracey Brill, would agree with that assessment. The training she received in the sales program allowed her to land a job in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry typically reserved for experienced sales people only. “When I told them about the classes and simulations I had been through I got an interview and the job. They were training their sales representatives in the same things we learned in class, so all I had to pick up was the medical knowledge.”
That launched Brill on a career that has led to her current job as director of Strategic Marketing for Abbott Pain Care. She also sits on the College of Business Board of Executive Advisors and remains a big backer of the sales program.
“The program puts such an emphasis on the work ethic and everything that goes into being a professional–from attire, to how you present yourself, how you present your information–and that professionalism goes a long way. Students come out understanding what it really takes to excel in sales.”
