Our Sales Center vision is coming into focus

Our mission is to deliver best practices in sales education and experiential learning—focused on providing students a strong foundation to be successful in the sales profession. Journey with us as the Sales Center becomes a reality.

Proposed Features

Below are the tactics orginially identified for the Sales Center, many of which have been accomplished.

Home for the Professional Sales BBA degree—the only sales degree offered at a Minnesota public university.
Full-time, designated sales program director.
Cohort structure to allow for increased synergy and accountability among students.
Sales learning lab and a dedicated role play facility where students will hone their sales techniques through giving presentations and receiving feedback with the aid of state-of-art technology and specialized programing.
Exposure to sales experts from the business community through classroom visits, company tours, and training workshops.
Board of Advisors to ensure the program is consistent with industry trends and focused on relationships with the business community.
Student mentor program to capitalize on experienced sales professionals interacting individually with students.
Sales Club to encourage student camaraderie and provide outside-of-classroom experiences.
High impact practices such as: sales-oriented internships, job shadowing, and sales competitions.

Progress

Building

Due to the generosity of our philanthropic partners, we are moving forward with a significant step towards the construction of our Sales Center.

A space has been identified and we are moving ahead into the pre-design phase, which will outline our spacial needs for the Sales Center.

We hope to include the following features:

Lobby area, breakout rooms for role-playing and presentations, and a collaborative learning classroom, which can be converted into a conference

room.

Computer monitors/equipment for self-video recording capabilities, specialized software packages, and other tools to assist in professional presence for students to conduct virtual meetings, attend webinars, compete in remote sales competitions, and more.
CRM system which will be utilized by the center itself, class projects, and for other educational uses.

Program

In July of 2021, Jessica Gardner was designated the Director of the Professional Sales program—housed in the Department of Marketing.
In 2019 Professional Sales was introduced as a new major and currently has over 80 students. UMD is the first and only public university in Minnesota to offer a Bachelor's degree in sales. It is among over 150+ US universities that teach sales and among an even smaller group with an offering at three sales-specific courses.
- Students who major in Professional Sales at UMD will take Fundamentals of Selling, Advanced Professional Selling, and Sales Analytics among other relevant business and liberal education courses.
- The Professional Sales major is focused on experiential learning that will help students develop strong communication and analytical skills to create innovative solutions to meet customer needs and give them experience using customer relationship management systems and data to comprehend unmet needs and facilitate buying decisions.
In 2019 the Sales Club was established and has continued to gain momentum with 40-60 members. The Sales Club is designed to give students the opportunity to gain a leg up on gaining real-world knowledge and career opportunities in sales. Students participating in the club can take part in sales competitions, networking events, leadership opportunities, and community involvement.
- Given 75% of business school graduates find themselves in customer-facing roles post-graduation, the Sales Club is the bridge from college to career for students.
In 2018, LSBE was designated a 3M Frontline Program school—one of only 14 universities nationwide. More than a basic internship, 3M’s Frontline Program provides students the opportunity to work for a Fortune 500 company.
- The eleven-week program couples a two-week orientation and training period with nine weeks of selling in a designated assignment for one of the company’s divisions in one of five business groups: Consumer, Energy and Electronics, Health Care, Industrial, or Safety and Graphics.

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