Giving Students an Executive-Speaking Experience

Preparing students for their careers and to be productive members of society are the hallmarks of a strong undergraduate education. The Baylor Professional Selling major and co-curricular program provides students with a variety of unique learning experiences toward these ends. One special exercise equips students for a future experience as a C-suite executive. In the Sales Internship course, ProSales students give a three-minute ProSales Talk (akin to a Ted Talk) in front of an audience of several hundred and a three-person film crew. That experience simulates senior leaders’ mainstage engagements with their employees. The individual videos are edited and included on the ProSales Talent page (which is available to Corporate Partners). Students also post their ProSales Talks videos on LinkedIn and their electronic portfolios.

One of the student speakers featured in this event, Baylor ProSales Senior Lachlan McGregor, said, “Preparing for my ProSales Talk was an incredible experience. I embraced the challenge of balancing content to engage both two types of audiences (students and professionals) while also being myself and sharing more about who I am. Working with a live audience and cameras pushed me to craft a message that would resonate broadly, from those in the room to people viewing it online. The process enhanced my public speaking and storytelling skills, and I loved every minute of it!”

As the faculty member responsible for this course, Professor Sandy Weissinger coached these students for this defining experience, “Students dedicate many hours developing their ideas, providing feedback to each other, practicing all aspects of the delivery, and finally presenting their talk to a large audience. The talks are then professionally edited, produced, and shared publicly. The ProSales Talks are a unique aspect of the Professional Selling experience. Students view them as an important ‘rite of passage.’ I have the distinct honor of seeing the incredible growth that happens in this rigorous process.”

The Baylor ProSales major includes a variety of curricular experiences that test students’ learning by having them apply theories, concepts, frameworks, and processes to actual business situations. One example of such experiential learning from each course in the curriculum includes: running a simulated sales call with executives who sell the product (ProSales 1), conducting discovery meetings with prospective companies’ talent acquisition leaders in partnership with the Baylor Career Center (ProSales 2), completing a benchmarking analysis of a company’s go-to-market strategy using a learning and development tool from a Fortune 100 company (Marketing Channels), giving a ProSales Talk (Sales Internship), coaching several ProSales 1 students through the learning and development process (Sales Management), and assessing job responsibilities for a Global Account Manager (GAM) and based on an interview with a GAM, developing a personal career plan for reaching a Key or Global Account role (Sales Capstone course on Key and Global Account Management). The Baylor ProSales major places strong emphasis on experiential learning in every course.

About the Center for Professional Selling
Dedicated to excellence in sales education and based in the university’s Hankamer School of Business, the Center for Professional Selling is recognized as one of the premier global information resources for the sales profession. For more information on the Center for Professional Selling, visit https://sites.baylor.edu/prosales/.