Leaders in Professional Selling

Throughout Baylor’s campus, there is no short supply of students leading an organization, team or group of students, working toward improving campus life, an organization, or a larger community. While leaders might be scattered across the Baylor campus, the discipline of Professional Selling is densely populated with leaders.

Students who choose to major in Professional Selling tend to gravitate toward a leadership role within whatever organization or team they are involved.

Take for instance, Bryan Baker who was the president of Phi Gamma Delta or Alex Dixon who is the president of Pi Kappa Phi. Consider also Austin Roberson who served as the Kappa Omega Tau Christmas Tree Chair and Jenna Werneke who is the All-University Sing Chair for Kappa Alpha Theta. All of these students point to their experiences in ProSales as confidence boosting, making such leadership positions a reality.

“Through this leadership role I was able to gain a lot of real world, business-related experiences. While I worked with all of these people, I had to focus on making each organization happy. Pro Sales helped me with my leadership role because I was able to ask the people good questions so that we could have a successful event and make the experience a good one so they would want to work with us again in the future,” shared Roberson, who has worked with his fraternity to raise over $10,000 for Habitat for Humanity.

“I would encourage every student to not only join an organization but discover how his/her gifts and personal growth can benefit the group and the individual,” added Baker.

Greek organizations are not the only ones benefiting from communication and management skills attained in ProSales, a number of students are leading athletic clubs. Kevin Rutledge and Taylor Dixon hold leadership positions on the Club Ultimate Frisbee and Club Lacrosse respectively. As president of the Club Ultimate team, Rutledge used his sales background to help raise over $1,000 selling t-shirts for the club and organizing tournaments. Dixon has served as a board member for the past two years handling on and off the field matters. As a leader on the field she often sees situations that need management very similar to situations that arise in business and uses her background to help resolve them.

In addition to Greek life and athletics, Professional Selling students also are leaving their leadership mark on faith and discipline organizations. Senior, Joseph Chen has held multiple executive positions on the Asians For Christ (AFC) board and has helped shaped the group’s vision.

“Being in ProSales has been a tremendous help to leading in AFC as it has equipped me with more skills on selling our vision and mission to old and new members,” remarked Chen. “It’s helped me hone my skills in thinking of and presenting vital information, and cutting out the waste.”

James Oltman has taken a bit of a different approach, finding his niche in Air Force ROTC, serving as a flight commander. Oltman shared this about how his involvement in AFROTC and Professional Selling complement each other: “The leadership and communication skills obtained through AFROTC are what have helped me adapt quickly as a professional sales major.”

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://hankamer.baylor.edu/prosales.