Many sales leaders aren’t familiar with academic sales centers. They’ve been growing quickly on college campuses worldwide, where they educate business students on professional selling, and prepare graduates to succeed in entry level sales careers. A few elite level academic sales centers are also educating managers in their MBA and executive education offerings, contributing to a new level of professional rigor among sales leadership. These centers will continue to grow because of the substantial value they create – for students who benefit from multiple offers at graduation, for corporate partners who access their most successful new hires, and for the academic institutions themselves, who are meeting an urgent need in the corporate communities they serve.
In this session we help attendees understand the emerging trend of academic sales centers, and the benefits of partnering with them. Aside from providing the highest quality sources of new hire salesperson candidates, they also offer the opportunity for sales leaders and their firms to partner with academics. Many firms find these partnerships productive sources of high quality research and management development.
