Baylor ProSales Well Represented Among Sales Educator Academy Speakers
The 10th Annual Sales Educators Academy (SEA) took place June 22-24, 2021 with twenty leading teacher-scholars sharing research and practices impacting the sales field. Well represented among the presenters, Baylor Center for Professional Selling’s speakers included Dr. Stephanie Mangus and Dr. Andrea Dixon.
More than one hundred participants, from around the world, engaged with content from digital disruptions to artificial intelligence in sales to customer success management. Current research on sales enablement, virtual meetings, internationalization of sales practices and sales competitions, and competitive differentiation captured the SEA audience’s imagination.
Dr. Mangus shared her latest results surrounding the use of students (seniors) as coaches for students (juniors) participating in their first selling class. One of the key “challenges” associated with teaching sales classes is the pedagogical intensity of coaching and providing feedback through the student role play process. She shared Baylor’s systematic approach to managing the process across two classes (Sales Management and ProSales 1) and multiple instructors. As she noted, the benefits are two-fold as students being coached get extra feedback on their selling skills, and students doing the coaching get valuable experience in a key sales management competency.
According to Mangus, “Being a sales scholar and teacher at Baylor presents great opportunities, but also comes with an expectation of being a leader in the academy. In research, teaching, and service, the expectation of Baylor ProSales is that our faculty will not only be present, but be leading whatever mission or activity comes along.”
Having participated in the very first Sales Educators Academy, Dr. Dixon was invited to participate on a panel with other leading scholars who were also presenters in that first SEA event a decade earlier, including Dr. Eli Jones (Dean, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University), Dr. Jeff Tanner (Dean, Strome College of Business, Old Dominion University), Dr. Greg Marshall (Crummer Graduate School of Business, Rollins College) and Dr. Ellen Pullins (Schmidt Research Professor of Sales & Sales Management, University of Toledo). As the University Sales Center Alliance president, Dixon shared perspectives from Baylor and from the broader view of the academy.
“The sales discipline has advanced rapidly in the last decade and Baylor ProSales continues to lead the way. Having the very first sales program in the country, started in 1985, Baylor University has been a trailblazer in the sales discipline since the beginning. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to both impact the field and watch how leading Sales scholars have shaped the academy and industry practices,” said Dixon.
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.