Selling Sales

Abstract

With a better understanding of the typical sales student, sales educators can design and deliver curriculum with a more customer-oriented approach. In order to better understand the decision to pursue sales education, more than 500 undergraduate business students at a large Midwestern university participated in a survey that examined the factors influencing their decision to pursue sales education within a business major. The findings indicate that the choice of sales education is driven by students' appreciation for creativity and people skills and their own interests and abilities, but the students' school advisors (either college or high school) have significant influence as well. In today's data-driven world, sales jobs depend on the use of analytical and intensively quantitative skills, yet our results indicate that sales students lack appreciation and enjoyment of the quantitative aspects of their major and potential career path.

Sales Education for Engineering Students: What Drives Interest and Choice?

“…Based on the framework, the formation and elaboration of career-relevant interests is a first step toward the actual selection of academic choice options (Lent et al 1994). Most students will point out they selected their major because it interests them, but drivers of this interest are less frequently articulated (Allen et al, 2014). In addition, Swenson et al (1993) point out that student perceptions and attitudes toward personal selling as a career have received substantially more academic attention than understanding the actual choice for a sales career.…”

“…One contribution of our study is that we investigate stated interest and actual choice for sales classes concurrently. In addition, because most research so far has been conducted into sales education for business students (Allen et al 2014;Cummins et al 2013), this article's hypotheses will focus on the much less explored area of sales education for engineering students.…”

“…In fact, Waldeck et al (2010) suggest that greater media use will lead to a more negative Perception of Salespeople and the sales role. The "social image" of a field of study and its students is an important influencer for the choice of a major in college (Allen et al, 2014;Kumar & Kumar, 2013). Given this, it is concerning that students often regard a career in sales as less than desirable (Ballestra et al, 2017;Inks & Avila, 2018;Karakaya et al, 2011) and that most stereotypes about salespeople are negative (Lee et al 2007).…”

Supply Chain Strategies for Quality Inspection under a Customer Return Policy: A Game Theoretical Approach

“…Present global supply chain networks consist of numerous enterprises linked together through a complex interplay of products and services, consistently work to improve the supply chain effectiveness and decision making to sustain an advantage against the competition generated by growing number of industries [34,35]. In this context, mathematical models coupled with behavior and organizational theories provide a sound framework for practices and decision-making in complex networks of collaborating enterprises [27][28][29][30]. Since the supply chain consists of multiple enterprises integrated by some common goals but having different constraints and conflicting objectives, these enterprises can be seen as players in a game [36][37][38].…”

“…Retailers in a supply chain act as a link between the final consumer and the manufacturer/supplier [29]. Retailers act as "gatekeepers", determining the market demands and placing orders with the manufacturer [30].…”