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INTEREST CATEGORY: SELLING AND SALES MAN
POSTING TYPE: Events

Author: Leff Bonney

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We are excited to announce that the agenda is locked in for the 10th Annual Sales Educators’ Academy program on June 22nd-24th. We have attached the agenda for this year’s SEA event and we hope you will attend! It is a great line up of sales and sales management discussions and I know you will come away with a long list of great ideas to implement into your sales courses in the fall semester! Registering is easy…just go to and click the registration link found right on the first landing page!

Thank you and please direct any questions about the this year’s SEA program to Leff Bonney at lbonney@fsu.edu. This event is free for doctoral students! Any doc students interested in attending, please reach out to Leff Bonney for details on how to register for free.

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The 10th Sales Educators’ Academy

Sponsored by Florida State University, the Crummer Graduate School of Business, Aston University, and the Sales Education Foundation

June 22nd-24th, 2021

Agenda for 2021 Sales Educators Academy (SEA)
(All times are in US Eastern Standard Time)

Day 1: Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021 – Virtual Sessions

9:30am – 9:45am – Technology Tune-Up: Time to Login, Test Your Technology and Chat Over Coffee

9:45am – 10:00am – Welcome Message from SEA Planning Chairs

The SEA Organizers Greg Marshall, Geoff Parks, and Leff Bonney will welcome the participants to the 10th Sales Educators Academy event.

10:00am – 10:45am – Importance of Competitive Differentiation in Sales Classes – Leff Bonney, Florida State University

B-2-B buyers continue to express frustration over the fact that they don’t see the difference between sellers’ and their offerings. Likewise, many sales books say that you should never “bash” a competitor, which is undoubtedly true; but does that mean “don’t talk about competitors at all”? In this session, SEA attendees will hear from Leff Bonney on some interesting research on how top-performing salespeople approach competitive differentiation conversations. Then, Leff will share how he has incorporated a competitive differentiation exercise in both basic and advanced sales classes.

10:45am – 11:15am – Break

11:15am – 12:15pm – Panel Session: Looking 10 Years Forward and 10 Years Back; Where Sales Education has Been and Where it is Heading – Andrea Dixon, Baylor University; Eli Jones, Texas A&M University; Greg Marshall, Crummer Graduate School; Ellen Pullins, University of Toledo; Jeff Tanner, Old Dominion University

This year marks the 10th year of Sales Educators’ Academy. Much has changed in sales education over these past 10 years. To put these changes into perspective, we are bringing back five of the facilitators who participated in the very first SEA event to discuss the evolution of sales education. Likewise, the panel will also discuss where they think university sales education is heading.

12:15pm – 1:00pm – Lunch

1:00pm – 1:45pm – Sales Education in a Digitally Disrupted World – Howard Dover, University of Texas – Dallas

In past SEA sessions, Dr. Howard Dover has presented Social Selling, Sales Tech Stack, Automation and Augmentation of the field. This year, Howard will provide his annual review of the current state of Technology in Sales, including how UT Dallas (and other schools) are using Artificial Intelligence tools to enhance the learning environment for sales students with the goal of accelerating and enhancing the sales learning experience. In this session, we will learn about the current state of the art Sales Technology, as well as identify which technologies can be more easily brought into the classroom, and which are needed in a modern sales curriculum.

2:00pm-3:00pm – To Challenge or Not to Challenge – Tim Riesterer, Corporate Visions Inc.

Challenging your prospects to change their status quo and choose you might be effective when acquiring new logos. But what happens after your prospect becomes a customer? Despite the fact that almost two-thirds of sales and marketing leaders see no need to differentiate their messages between acquisition and expansion, surprising new research shows that the psychology of customer expansion is 180 degrees different than customer acquisition. In fact, using a one-sizefits- all approach can put most of your revenue and growth opportunity at risk! Join Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer of Corporate Visions and co-author of The Expansion Sale, to learn how to tailor your approach to match each buying moment across the customer lifecycle.

3:00pm – 3:30pm – Coffee Break

3:30pm – 4:00pm – RNMKRS AI Sales Competition Overview – Stefanie Boyer, Bryant University

Sales competitions are great developmental events, however, the number of students who can attend real-time sales competitions is limited. With RNMKRS, students can participate in AIdriven sales competition and simulation which allows virtually unlimited numbers of students to participate in a competitive sales situation. Learn how to give students the opportunity to practice with an actual AI customer bot – programmed to think, act and respond like a real customer. Faculty can provide all of their students with unlimited individualized coaching and attention in a gamified setting that encourages practice.

4:00pm – 4:15pm – Concluding Remarks

Wrap up the day with closing thoughts and comments.

Day 2: Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021

9:30am – 9:45am – Technology Tune and Opening Remarks: Time to Login, Test Your Technology and Review the Day 2 Agenda Over Coffee

9:45am – 10:45am – Implementing Creativity in Sales Education – Jeff Stamp – University of Minnesota

Have you ever eaten a Baked Lays potato chip? Well, you have Jeff Stamp to thank for that product. Jeff worked for years in product innovations roles for major corporations before coming back to academia, where he now teaches sales and entrepreneurship courses. In this session, Jeff will lead us through a workshop on creativity and how to teach sales students to think more creatively when it comes to building valuable solutions for customers.

10:45am-11:15am – Break

11:15am – 12:15pm– Trends in Corporate Sales Training- Casey Byrnes, Wickshire Senior Living; Jen Miller, Marsh & McLennan Agency; Adrian Voorkamp, Johnson Controls

It’s no secret that the world has changed, and it seems that the phrase “the new normal” is tossed around hundreds of times in the even the briefest conversations. Clearly, our students will enter a new normal when it comes to onboarding and sales training in their respective employers following graduation. In this session, we will hear from a panel of three highly successful sales training and development leaders who will share their thoughts on key trends in sales onboarding and training programs. I’m sure we will learn something new that we can share with students as they build expectations about life as an employed sales rep!

12:15pm-1:00pm – Lunch Break

1:00pm-1:30pm – Success in Teaching Students Customer Success – Bryan Hochstein, University of Alabama

“Customer Success Manager” or “Customer Success Rep” are terms that are gaining traction in sales organizations as companies continue to divide their sales teams into “hunters” and “farmers”. Most collegiate sales program curriculum focuses on the hunter role with emphasis on landing new customers through consultative selling. However, it may be that many of our students will land in sales roles, where the main duties include maintaining good relationships with existing clients and upselling/renewing these clients. In this session, Bryan Hochstein will share his experiences in building a Customer Success class and potential topics that other sales educators might want to include in their sales classes going forward.

1:30pm-2:00pm – Do’s and Don’ts of Using Students as Coaches in Sales Programs – Stephanie Mangus, Baylor University and Chuck Viosca, Florida State University

Faculty who are trying to build a sales program are all too familiar with the phrase, “not enough hours in the day”. As much we would love to be able to spend significant, quality time coaching each and every one of our sales students, it’s just not possible as the number of students in our sales classes continues to grow. One creative solution to this challenge is to build a systematic way for students to coach each other. The benefits of this 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. In this session, we will explore do’s and don’ts of using students as coaches in sales classes in hopes of sharing a few best practices for getting students more feedback as to how to be a better seller!

2:00pm-2:30pm – Innovations in Teaching Finalist Presentation #1 – Adopting an International Sales Role Play to Enhance Sales Education – Diane Edmundson and Lucy Matthews – Middle Tennessee State University

When examining the sales course descriptions for all U.S. Sales Education Foundation universities, only 6.5% include some international sales element as part of their program. This highlights a need for increased emphasis on international sales skills. One effective method of teaching international sales is to incorporate an international role play in Professional Selling courses. In this session, the presenters will highlight an idea on sales educators can incorporate a creative international sales element into their classes. This international element will help students learn effective skills related to communication with non-native English speakers, collaboration with international students, international sales call techniques, and international problem-solving.

2:30pm-3:00pm – Coffee Break

3:00pm-3:30pm – Innovations in Teaching Finalist Presentation #2 – Coaching Your Sales Students Through Personal Change Using the New SCARED SO WHAT™ Model and Why It Is Important – Grant Van Ulbrich, Director, Sales Transformation – International

Sales students will experience a significant amount of change as they transition from sales students to sales professionals. Likewise, change will be a constant as they progress in their sales and sales management careers. COVID taught us that the “change” in our lives will often be dramatic and potentially life-altering. In this session, Grant Van Ulbrich will present a method called the SCARED SO WHAT™ Model for coping with change. Grant has used this technique with experienced sales teams, and he will show us how we might adapt this model to use with our sales students as a way of teaching them how to deal with stressful change.

3:30pm-4:00pm – Innovations in Teaching Finalist Presentation #3 – Better “Needs Discovery” Means Better Sales Students – Irving Corrales, Morehouse College

Teaching students how to effectively uncover customer needs is a major tenet of all university sales programs. Students must learn to ask specific, probing questions to obtain necessary information in order to advance their understanding of customer situations and the challenges that customers face. The goal is to gain as much financial, operational, tactical and/or strategic information that’s pertinent to the sales scenario. Despite our best efforts, it is still challenging for students to discover and understand all of the customer’s outcomes and prioritizing their importance to the executive buyer. In this session, Irving Corrales will demonstrate how he uses the Ecosystem software platform to help his students with needs discovery. The Ecosystems platform is designed to ensure every conversation with customers is based on developing, understanding, and quantifying the customer’s business outcomes. Students now have an easyto- manage Needs Discovery asset at their disposal, that makes role-play preparation more fun and educational.

4:00pm-4:15pm – Day 2 Wrap-up and Closing Comments

5:00pm-6:00pm – Virtual Cocktail Party!!!

Day 3: Thursday, June 24th, 2021

9:30am – 9:50am – Virtual Networking Coffee Session

9:50am-10:00am – Technology Tune and Opening Remarks: Time to Login, Test Your Technology and Review the Day 3 Agenda

10:00am-10:30am – Bringing the World Into Your Sales Classroom– Willy Bolander, Florida State University and Maria Rouziou, HEC-Montreal

As a part of the Global Sales Science Institute initiative to make sales more “international”, twenty academics from all over the world conducted interviews with sales leaders about sales in different parts of the globe. Willy and Maria will highlight how to access the videos of these interviews, and more importantly, discuss ways that these interviews can be used in sales classrooms.

10:30am-11:00am – Coffee Break

11:00am-12:00pm – What is Sales Enablement and Why Should We Care? Rob Peterson – Northern Illinois; Liz McCormick, Sales Effectiveness at Pegasystems; Deb Honea, Sales Productivity at Amazon Web Services

The concept of “Sales Enablement” is fairly new, but is a fast-growing function in many businesses around the world. Sales enablement is the iterative process of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers. The reason sales educators need to know about this new function is two-fold. First, it’s important for sales management students to understand how Sales Enablement departments are supporting sales teams and changing the role of sales managers. Second, Sales Enablement might represent an exciting new career path for sales students, as they consider the companies they may work for post-graduation. In this session, Rob Peterson will host a corporate panel session on recent trends and the future of sales enablement. Then, he will lead a discussion on what these trends mean for us as we continue to evolve our sales curriculum.

12:00pm-1:00pm – Lunch Break

1:00pm-1:30pm – Preferences in Virtual Meetings – Jason Jordan, University of Virginia

There’s no shortage of opinions of how to facilitate effective sales meetings via Zoom. You would think we would have figured it out by now, but watch any large group on Zoom and there is always someone who has terrible lighting or is facing an awkward direction as they interact with the technology. In this session, we will hear from Jason Jordan, author of Cracking the Sales Management Code, on research he conducted into what people really think is the best way to conduct a virtual sales meeting in terms of lighting, backgrounds, etc. He will also share how sales educators can get access to a free, online, virtual meeting training session for their students.

1:30pm-2:00pm – Closing Comments and Innovations in Teaching

Award Ceremony Parting is such sweet sorrow…but by now we will be sick of Zoom-ing and ready to take all of the ideas from the past three days and put them into action. So, we will meet to say goodbye until next year, hear a short overview of SEA 2022 to be held in Birmingham, England, and most importantly, we will award this year’s innovation in teaching award based on the votes of the Sales Educators’ Academy participants.