Undergraduate Professional Sales Program Celebrates Silver Anniversary

Undergraduate Professional Sales Program Celebrates Silver Anniversary

Megan Rupp is looking toward commencement with confidence.

When the senior completes her bachelor's degree in professional sales with a minor in operations and supply chain management in December, she'll do so with excitement for what's next thanks to the full-time job awaiting her at Owens Corning, the building products leader on the Fortune 500 with a headquarters less than 5 miles from The University of Toledo's Main Campus.

The promising start to her career reflects the relationships she's built and the opportunities she's leveraged at UToledo's John B. and Lillian E. Neff College of Business and Innovation - and particularly its Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales.

"The professional sales program is great," said Rupp, who also is president of the campus chapter of Pi Sigma Epsilon, the professional fraternity specializing in sales, marketing and management. "We've got all these resources available to us, from the supportive faculty to the Invitational Sales Competition. I feel like I've been given the tools I need to be successful in my career."

Rupp contributes to a nearly perfect post-graduation job placement rate within the Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales, reflecting the continued strength of the academic program that was among the first to bring professional sales to higher education.

UToledo became the first institution to offer an undergraduate professional sales degree program within the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business in 2000, two years before UToledo established the Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales in 2002. The University's first-mover advantage positioned it among the founding members of both the University Sales Center Alliance in 2002 and the Global Sales Science Institute in 2007.

Today, as the undergraduate program celebrates its silver anniversary, UToledo remains a key player in the development of sales professionals with its comprehensive curriculum that uniquely integrates a course on purchasing and real-world experiences through corporate collaboration and internship opportunities, top-notch faculty who bring industry experience and academic excellence to the classroom and an invitational sales competition that attracts student teams from across the country.

Among the faculty is Distinguished University Professor and Schmidt Research Professor of Sales and Sales Management Ellen Pullins, who is the co-senior editor of the prestigious Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. She recently returned from a semester collaborating with sales colleagues at the University of Eastern Finland as a Fulbright Specialist.

Research published by Pullins and past and present colleagues contributes to UToledo's position among the Top 10 academic institutions in the world for lifetimes sales research impact, according to the academic analytics database ScholarGPS.

"We're building on an impressive legacy at the Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales," said Deirdre Jones, an alumna and director of the school that supports undergraduate and graduate students. "Our students take advantage of numerous opportunities to grow skills, develop confidence and cultivate relationships so that they're poised for successful careers immediately after graduation."

Rupp explored several disciplines in her early semesters at the Neff College of Business before Jones helped her to identify the right match for her interests and her natural strengths in the Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales.

She credits that move with connecting her with Owens Corning, which supports the school as one of a dozen corporate partners invested in developing the local talent pipeline of professional sales students. Owens Corning is also a corporate sponsor of the UToledo Invitational Sales Competition, which annually attracts dozens of undergraduate student teams from as far as Idaho and Texas as the only sales competition exclusively for non-seniors in the United States.

Also the first and only national sales competition to be certified by the University Sales Center Alliance, the Invitational Sales Competition is a valuable opportunity for employers to identify and engage promising sales professionals at the onset of their careers.

"The Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales is a vital component of our talent pipeline at Owens Corning," said Steve Kosinski, the company's roofing sales operations leader. "Their emphasis on sales techniques and philosophies enables their students to distinguish themselves among their peers. Under the leadership of Deirdre Jones, I can always rely on each student to be well-prepared for the challenges and triumphs of a sales career in today's competitive environment."

Approximately 40% of undergraduate students studying professional sales land jobs with corporate partners or sponsors including Hilti, International Paper and Owens Corning.

Rupp has completed two internships at Owens Corning, in line with the requirements of her degree program that integrates academics and experience. One hundred percent of undergraduate professional sales students complete at least one internship, a higher rate than even the 85% of students who voluntarily intern in the Neff College of Business.

"I learned a ton," Rupp said of her summers at Owens Corning, the first in supply chain management and the second in roofing sales - the same division where she's set to begin in career through the company's sales development program in January. "My first internship really helped me to develop a sense of business acumen. When it came to the sales internship, I had to come to terms with the idea that I'm not going to be able to plan for every meeting like I do a role-play at school. I've got to be able to go with the flow and pivot and problem-solve. It was scary because I knew I might mess up, I might fail, I might embarrass myself, but at the end of the day, I would be learning from my mistakes and only going to get better from it."

She also found herself applying the skills she learned in the classroom and in the college's internal sales competition that, like its counterpart that welcomes cross-country teams, challenges students to "sell" a product in role-play scenarios.

"I was using the active listening, the rapport building, the questioning, all those skills that I had already learned," she said. "It became really clear to me: It does translate. This really does work."