Large parts of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes are automated. One example is the item values in the sales order process. To execute a sales order, the ERP system applies a specific "find" strategy on a wide variety of data sources such as customer master, material master, and customer price-specific data tables, and…

Few academic disciplines make as frequent use of experiential learning exercises as marketing and sales. This is particularly true in selling courses, where a sales role play often serves as a culminating exercise in which students are tasked with building rapport with a buyer, uncovering buyer needs, overcoming objections, and closing a sale.…

The role-play is a valued experiential tool used by university sales programs to engage students and better prepare them for a potential career in sales. However, in-class role-play activities have the potential to create scheduling dilemmas. Mandatory, internal role-play competitions are proposed as a solution to these logistical issues while…

Based on the industry need to hire qualified salespeople, a call to expand sales education at universities has been continuously echoed. This article provides an updated overview of the sales education landscape in the United States and offers insight into both the curriculum offerings and the practices of marketing educators who teach sales…

We introduce the surreal play experience (SPE) as an effective pedagogical method of experiential learning for teaching professional sales. Using a customer's needs assessment as a skill to develop, we describe the method, procedure, and materials needed to implement a surreal play session. We designed three experimental conditions to analyze…

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) presents both challenges and opportunities for marketing educators. This paper outlines a transformative process undertaken by our department to integrate AI across the marketing curriculum. We detail a strategic shift from initial resistance to acceptance, resulting in the successful integration of…

To better understand the marketing education discipline, this research uses an eleven-year (2013-2023) systematic bibliographic content analysis of teaching and pedagogy paper topics that are part of the Society for Marketing Advances (SMA) Annual Conference Proceedings. Since many marketing educators present works in progress at conferences…

A challenge for Principles of Marketing instructors is introducing new topics to majors and non-majors alike in a way that piques interest and increases student engagement across the breadth of topics. To help instructors overcome this challenge, we provide marketing "hooks," or short in-class exercises, that can be implemented to…

The "Teaching Moments" program at the "2020 Society for Marketing Advances Annual Conference" moved beyond the confines of four walls going virtual due to the pandemic, just like universities around the world. Many of the "Teaching Moments" were lessons on how to thrive in our evermore important online environment.…

Given the recent proliferation in sales programs, business colleges face a new set of challenges. Sales competencies are changing rapidly, and firms struggle with identifying and attracting sales candidates on campus. Therefore, it is important that we understand needed competencies and how the content of job advertisements may differentially…

Professional sales as a subject in the university curriculum now faces rapid adoption. There appears to be a corresponding decline in teaching sales management or leadership. The Sales Leadership course presented in this paper combines concepts of sales management with experiential learning activities to the sales curriculum. Beyond this…

This paper presents a pedagogical innovation used in a marketing principles course that requires students to apply for scholarships throughout the semester as an active-learning technique that aids knowledge transfer of key marketing concepts (e.g., STP). Previous research has revealed that when students identify their personality strengths and…

Experiential instruction has been implemented in classrooms as a method of learning and reinforcing complicated material. This study introduces a design-thinking project taken from a University Art & Design Program and adapted for a sales course. 'Pre' and 'post' comprehension testing of students on the SPIN selling approach was completed to…

Research claims that entrepreneurial skills and knowledge are important for the careers of musicians (Bennett, 2016; Breivik, Selvik, Bakke, Welde & Jermstad, 2015; Coulson, 2012). Alumni of higher music education (HME) report "a gap between the perceived importance of such [entrepreneurial] skills and their acquisition" (Miller,…

Experiential projects bring students closer to real-world situations. This is valuable in sales education because the complexities of the sales process are difficult to learn from a textbook. A student project was developed that involved the selling of advertising space in a one-time newspaper insert. The project included a substantial minimum…