ASU hosts college sales competition

For the first time, ASU's Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness will play host to the Western States Collegiate Sales Competition, formerly the California Collegiate Sales Competition, on April 13.

The competition, established in 2005 at Sacramento State University, is a valuable way for students, company recruiters and faculty to interact in a spirit of competition, collegiality and professionalism.

This year the competition officially moved to the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at ASU's Polytechnic campus under the direction of the Student Engagement Program and Otis White, program coordinator in the school's business administration program and the event organizer.

White had been a team coach last year for the ASU team and the Pi Sigma Epsilon marketing fraternity.

“Morrison School was chosen to host the event because of the school's strong student engagement focus and the ability to host such an event,” White says.

The contest includes business colleges and schools from universities located in California and Arizona . Over the past several years, dozens of junior and senior students from nine universities have participated in the competition. Contestants generally are from marketing, management or business administration disciplines, but the competition is open to all majors.

Each school selects students to participate in the competition. Students use buyer profiles and sales case studies to prepare for the competition, where they participate in two mock sales interviews and are rated by a team of judges made up of company sales executives from sponsoring organizations. This year, ADP and Liberty Mutual Insurance are the lead sponsors. More than $7,000 in prize money is available across 12 categories of competition.

Participation from industry ranges from sponsorships to judging, and in some cases it provides networking opportunities for soon-to-be graduates. In past years many competitors have landed great jobs as a result of the exposure they received to the companies sponsoring the competition. Additional sponsors of the 2007 event include Federated Insurance, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and J&L Marketing.

Students experience the excitement of competing while benefiting from training and teamwork outside the classroom, White says.

The daylong competition is being held at the Agribusiness Center on the Polytechnic campus. For more information, call Otis White at (480) 727-1513.