The Measure of Success
Raising the bar in professional sales training at NIU's College of
Business
by Joe King
So ... you say you’re interested in getting into sales? Well, Buddy, have I got a program for you. Mister, this program won’t just turn you into a super salesman, it will make you a guaranteed quota buster! Not only that, but for one low price, it will also give you clearer skin, fresher breath and forever free you from the curse of cellulite! Just sign right here on the dotted line.
Sales
patter like this is the stuff of nightmares for marketing professors Dan
Weilbaker and Rick Ridnour and instructor Ed Brata. Combined, these three
men have put more than three decades of heart and soul into turning the
NIU Professional Sales Program into one of the best of its kind in the
nation. Part of their success comes from fighting that stereotype. All
three men have spent time in the field, selling everything from pharmaceuticals
to real estate and heavy machinery, so they know how to move product.
However, don’t expect them to give you the hard sell when it comes
to their program.
Like all good salesmen, they know when to let the product sell itself. After all, what could they add that could be more convincing than the dozens of top-flight companies that line up each year to hire new graduates and sing the program’s praises? What better advertising could they have than thousands of successful alumni working for a Who’s Who of companies throughout the Chicago region and beyond? And there is no need to boast when organizations like the Professional Society for Sales and Marketing Training (SMT) will do it for you.
Last fall, SMT granted full accreditation to the NIU Professional Sales Program, the first collegiate program in the country to attain that honor. In making their announcement, the accreditation team of sales executives singled out the program’s state-of-theart facilities, its experienced faculty and a proven curriculum as factors that placed the program among the top 5 percent in the nation.
“That was some wonderful external validation for us,” says Weilbaker, who has helped shape the program for more than 13 years. “Academics are often accused of doing their own thing regardless of the needs of business, but this accreditation singles us out as providing the type of education students need to enter the field of sales.”
A New Breed
More precisely, the program seeks to graduate “sales professionals,” which means that part of its charter is to battle the negative stereotypes perpetuated by every slick-talking, arm-twisting salesman from bogus bandleader Harold Hill to car hawking Joe Isuzu. Sure, students are tutored in how to close the deal, but they are also taught that getting to that point is the end of a process which, if executed properly does more than result in sales; it creates a relationship –the key to being a true professional in business-to-business selling.
“Our guiding philosophy begins with the word ‘professional,’” says Ridnour, who like Weilbaker has been with the program almost from its inception in 1989, when the college’s Board of Executive Advisors identified the need for a better-trained sales force, the first career stepping stone for about 70 percent of all marketing students.
The starting point on the path to professional sales is Marketing 350, Principles of Selling.While it is a required course for all marketing majors, it is also the first of three courses that make up the professional sales curriculum.
“Most students come to that class with a stereotypical idea of what sales is all about. A lot of them just don’t want to go into sales at all. So we work to elevate the image of professional selling–explaining its importance in business and in society,” says Ridnour, whose sunny disposition and positive attitude make him ideally suited to that task.
The content of the class includes things such as basic selling techniques, communications skills, overcoming objections and how to conduct a meeting. It is also where students are introduced to the program’s philosophy that building long-term relationships with customers is more important than making sales.
“We try to teach them that the salesman’s role is to provide solutions that help clients reach their goals; that they need to go through a process of discovery to learn about the company they are trying to help,” says Ridnour, who honed his own skills in that art years ago selling financial services and real estate, and as a sales trainer. “It all comes back to being a professional, and I think by midway through the semester, a lot of students in the class start to think that they can see themselves in the role of a sales professional.”
Precious Resources
Those most serious about pursuing that goal next move on to Marketing 446, Sales Management, which is where they are most likely to run into Ed Brata, who joined the program for a one-year stint as a visiting executive in 1992 and has stuck around ever since.
In Brata’s class, students learn the skills needed to manage a sales force. They get a taste of organizational behavior, leadership, motivation and assertiveness. They also learn a bit about compassion. “I always tell them,‘Time is our most precious commodity, but people are our most precious resource’,” Brata says.
As in all of the classes, students also get a steady stream of guest speakers who work in sales, and a few “war stories” from Brata himself. After more than 28 years in sales, mostly in real estate, Brata has seen it all–from the lows of driving to an appointment with little more to his name than the change in his pocket and a half-tank of gas, to the highs of selling $3.4 million in real estate over a two-day period, and living with all the trappings that such success can yield. He also tells the students cautionary tales of the toll that the world can exact as you make the trip from one extreme to the other.
“When I talk about stress, I bring in a bag full of back braces, traction apparatus and various other supports, as well as a grocery bag full of prescription pill bottles–all of them with my name on them,” says Brata. “I do it to demonstrate how debilitating stress can be and so we can talk about the importance of keeping balance in your life.”
As Brata sees it, each professor fills a specific role in the program. “Rick motivates them, I teach them about interpersonal skills and Dan teaches them about rejection.”
Hard Knocks
| “Yeah, I’m the hard ass,” acknowledges Weilbaker, who cut his sales chops in the pharmaceutical industry. For several years now the capstone class of the sales sequence, Marketing 450, Advanced Professional Selling, has been Weilbaker’s sole province. It is there that the curriculum gets accelerated and students begin to learn about competition. Even getting into the class is a challenge–last semester, 58 students applied and interviewed for the 36 available seats in the two sessions offered. Those who make the cut learn about rejection soon enough. |  Professor Dan Weilbaker, one of the founders of the NIU Professional Sales program, puts students through some grueling, but worthwhile, paces. |
While all courses in the sales curriculum require students to do some sort of role-play during the course of the semester, it is the backbone of Marketing 450. It is in those exercises that students are pitted against the world’s fussiest, cheapest, pickiest client they are ever likely to find:Weilbaker.
The headaches start before the students ever reach the negotiating table. Weilbaker forces them to make appointments to schedule their role-plays–and specifically instructs his secretary to give students a hard time. Oh, and he gets to stack the deck.
For instance, consider the plight of the poor students who have to try to sell him facial tissues for a fictitious hotel chain. Restricted to a price of 50 cents a box, and faced with a buyer trying to undercut his current supplier’s price of 45 cents, they must devise some sort of “value added” aspect for their mundane product. In a recent run-through of the scenario,Weilbaker shot down one innovative idea after another. A refillable box? Too unsanitary. Compressed boxes of 100 that fit the 50-count holder? Not fluffy enough.Too gross. Embossed tissues? “I don’t think we want our logo associated with something they use to blow their nose,” he sniffed.
Weilbaker, who claims not to relish his role, but plays it well, says he is not trying to be mean, just instructive. “I would rather they have a hard time here in the classroom where it is sort of a protected environment, than out there in the business world,”Weilbaker says. “I would rather have them wonder where all of the tough customers are once they get their first job.”
The Grind
Some graduates of the program may also wonder if the class wasn’t busier than their job. Over the course of the semesters, topics covered include everything from selling techniques like value added or SPIN, to written sales proposals, mock job interviews (conducted by actual recruiters who assign the grade), and cold calling on companies to introduce them to the sales program (creating and updating a database to assist in the process). Students also participate in a number of innovative programs, from computerized selling simulations, to a dinner meeting where they are tutored in the finer points of etiquette, to a day of learning how to sell on the golf course (see sidebar). All of those activities must be logged in a weekly report, using the laptop computers that are issued to the students for the semester.
For their final, students spend the semester researching a product, riding along with a salesman who sells that product and interviewing a customer. After all of that, they not only have to write a research paper, but face Weilbaker across the table one last time. As with all of the role-plays, not many sales are made, but a lot of learning takes place.
“To me, the big lesson is to teach them to be self-sufficient, to think on their feet and react to new situations and handle them appropriately. That’s where the surprises and throwing things at them come in. That’s where I expect them to think outside of the box. If you are thinking inside the box you are selling just like everyone else. In the end, I think they realize, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ There are no scars. They actually walk out with confidence.”
