Baylor ProSales Announces Results of the 2025 Baylor Business Selling Outside (BBSO) competition
Baylor’s Center for Professional Selling revealed the results of the Baylor Business Selling Outside (BBSO) competition on February 12 as students and faculty gathered to celebrate. The BBSO is designed to engage students in a realistic sales situation with business executives. This year, students focused on selling BMC’s Human Resources Management (HRSM) product which integrates workflows to simplify onboarding, maintenance, and offboarding of an organization’s employees. These in-person role-play sales meetings provided students with the opportunity to engage, face-to-face, with twelve executives from BMC, a Platinum Elite corporate partner for Baylor ProSales.
Student competitors were judged virtually by 165 business executives from around the country, offering students a chance to gain valuable feedback from the Center for Professional Selling’s Corporate Partners, Advisory Board members, Ambassador Board members, and alumni. This year’s competition consisted of 162 competitors (individual and two-person-teams) and the top ten individual finishers included:
1. Elana Norman
2. Sam Horn
3. Celeste Derstine
4. Trevor Gaswirth
5. Wilson Feezel
6. Brady Parker
7. Tyler Peterson
8. Annabelle Johnson
9. Gabby Hendricks
9. Vishal Nair
9. Piya Patel
First-place finisher. Elana Norman, spoke about her competition experience: “The BBSO competition challenges students to demonstrate their sales expertise in a dynamic 20-minute role play. Success depends on a deep understanding of the product and its alignment with the prospect’s needs. This year’s case posed unique challenges, which I approached with a strategic mindset—connecting the features and benefits of BMC’s HRSM solution to the prospect’s training and onboarding processes. Through thoughtful research, targeted-questioning, and active listening, I uncovered key pain points and effectively positioned the solution to demonstrate value to the prospect.”
To drive student learning about the team-sale process, students in the advanced sales class compete in the BBSO as both individual competitors and as part of a two-person team. The top-performing team for this competition included Colt Lychner and Ella Kruse. Explaining how this experience shaped his thought process, Colt shared, “Mastering the give-and-take between you and your partner is a skillset that only the most dynamic and adaptable salespeople possess. Coming into this roleplay, my partner and I knew that our specific roles and expertise would allow us to perform the best. With the two of us adopting a specific role, we were able to march towards our objective with organization and clarity.”
As the Platinum Elite corporate partner for the ProSales program, BMC Software serves as the context for the BBSO competition. “Working with BMC as our Platinum Elite corporate partner for the past three years has allowed ProSales to advance our students’ understanding of the dynamic tech sector. We are excited to announce that BMC has renewed their commitment for another three years as our Platinum Elite corporate partner,” according to Dr. Andrea Dixon, Executive Director of the Center for Professional Selling. “The complexity of the B2B sales context provided by BMC builds strong conceptual thinking skills among our students as they prepare themselves for the complexities of today’s business world.”
The BBSO allows Baylor students to see how they stack up against their peers and allows the center’s Corporate Partners to view Baylor talent as they prepare to enter the job market. In addition, top individual performers are awarded cash prizes.
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/.