The Southeastern Sales Team recently honed new skills to compete virtually in the 22nd Annual National Collegiate Sales Competition (NCSC). Originally scheduled to be held in Atlanta, the competition included two categories—Virtual Speed Selling and Role Playing.
“The NCSC staff, corporate judges, and student competitors quickly pivoted from their semester-long preparation to compete in person to an online format within a two-week time frame,” said April Kemp, Southeastern marketing and sales instructor and professional sales program coach.
Representing Southeastern in the Virtual Speed Selling Competition, which was judged by 16 corporate sponsors, were marketing majors and professional sales program students Brielle Ricca of Walker, Paxton Page of Prairieville, and Ashley Murphy of Baton Rouge. Each student delivered a 90-second elevator pitch live via web conference to the corporate judges. Ricca won the top honors out of over 360 competitors by being selected the Top Speed Seller by more companies than any other student in the competition.
For the Role Playing competition, India Williams of Baton Rouge and Conner Brian of Greenwell Springs were chosen to represent Southeastern this year. In the wild card round, Williams won first place in her room and Brian won second place in his room. Williams was able to move on to the quarterfinals.
More than 75 universities and 40 corporations participated in the NCSC, which was hosted by Kennesaw State’s Center for Professional Selling. Overall, Southeastern was the runner-up for Top Rookie School, as this was the first time to participate, giving the team an automatic bid to next year’s competition.
“We are proud of our student competitors for transitioning quickly to an online competition format,” said Kemp. “Our students worked hard, and the outcome showed Southeastern was a fierce competitor.”