Let’s make a deal: UTC business students simulate sales meetings

Students in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga recently practiced real-world sales pitches to build confidence and develop professional skills.

Lecturer Libby Fakier organized the week-long exercise at the UTC Sales Institute, where her “Personal Selling and Self-Promotion” course practiced sales pitches through a simulated meeting.

Students were assigned to sell copiers to potential buyers listed on their “lead sheets.” The buyers, who were students in the “Advanced Sales” course, had the authority to approve or reject any deals offered to them. 

Fakier provided students with feedback from the recorded meeting video.

A general education elective, Fakier said the course focused on soft or transferable skills such as research, preparation and selling your company. 

“The business school version of this class is all about professional sales,” she explained. “This is about building your brand, establishing your brand, who do you want to be, identifying who you want to be, and what mark you want to leave on the world.”

Ben Painter, a sophomore majoring in communication with a minor in marketing, said this course “is the first class that I’m genuinely excited to go to, which is really cool.”

The Johnson City, Tennessee, native is already in the sales world. Painter works as a door-to-door salesman for ECJ Services—a window-cleaning business started by friends.

He said learning a new sales approach expanded his knowledge of the industry.

“I’ll go back and watch it since it was recorded,” he said. “I’ll go back and watch and see what I can improve on. It went really well. I ended up getting the signed contract at the end, so that was really cool.

“With the business experience and this activity, I’ve definitely learned to show a service and understand customer needs confidently.”

While this course primarily prepares students for life in the professional world, Fakier explained that these skills are just as necessary for non-business students.

“Gartner did a study and 80% of students who go through the business school end up in a sales position at some point in their career,” she said.”

Senior Luke Downs, a marketing and professional sales major, acted as a buyer in the simulated exercise.

Downs said these exercises during his time as an underclassman helped him prepare for the responsibilities of a sales job.

“It’s nice having a low-pressure zone where you can actually make a sales call instead of actually having your first job making a sales call,” Downs said.

“One thing that’s also really good is the feedback you can get with the rooms being filmed. You can actually see what you did. When it’s not filmed, you might make yourself sound better or worse, but now you can see exactly where you messed up.”

Acting as the buyer helped Downs understand what the other side of the table may be experiencing and how that side feels during a meeting. He added that he also learns from other sellers’ techniques.

“It’s useful,” he said. “You know what they’re going through and how they prepare, and you can take it and compare it to how you’ve come into a room when you did it. You just learned more from doing it so many times. You can give that experience to somebody else, too.”

Fakier explained that this exercise helps students overcome some fears or anxieties they had before the meeting and better prepares them for their future careers.

“They want to do it again,” she said. “Even if they don’t want to go into sales, they want to do this again because, number one, it wasn’t as bad; number two, now I know what to expect; and third, they now know how to approach this. ‘I would’ve done X, Y or Z differently.’ They’re excited about it and feel confident. They feel like ‘I slayed the beast.’”

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