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Today’s show featured an interview with Andy McGowan, Director of the Center for Professional Selling at Virginia Commonwealth Universisty; and Daniel Kane, Director of Training, Systems and Processes at Curbell Plastics.

Find Andy on LinkedIn. Find Daniel on LinkedIn.

ANDY’S TIP: “Sales is hard. It’s not easy. You have to learn to talk to people… You have to get out there and you have to talk to people.”

DAN’S TIP: “Invest in yourself… invest in your own learning too. You want to go buy that book, that book about sales, go buy it. Go spend the 12 bucks, go spend the 15 bucks, read it and learn from it and pass it on.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Gentlemen, it’s great to see you here. We’re doing today’s interview in July of 2026. Andy, it must be an interesting time for you, obviously. I presume you’re between school years and it’s probably a very busy time as well. You appeared on the show in January of 2026. Get our listeners caught up on the Center for Professional Selling that you run at Virginia Commonwealth University. I know it’s a fast-growing program. 

Andy McGowan: It is, and thank you for having me and thank you for letting me bring Dan on. We’ll talk about Curbell. But yeah, this is a very busy time prepping. We are four weeks till school starts. Our semester starts August 18th, so the clock is ticking, which you can’t see below the camera, is syllabi and books behind me and things getting prepared for the term. 

Since we last spoke, our program continues to grow. We’ve gone from, just a few years ago, just before I started, offering only three intro sales classes. This fall, we’ll have seven sections of our intro sales class. We started last year adding a sales enablement and analytics class. Now we have a fabulous instructor who comes to us from Salesforce and LinkedIn. We put in our advanced sales class. It reconstituted from my predecessor, Wayne Slough. It was a really busy spring since we last spoke. 

Now it’s trying to continue to grow the program. It’s like one of the growth areas. As the Dean said to me, he goes, “This is one of the growth areas for the business school and for the university, because sales is a great profession.” I try to convince our students of that all year when they’re looking for jobs when we get to the spring term, and sponsors like Dan at Curbell come on. He’ll probably tell you stories about students that they’ve brought in. It’s been a fun off-season. I think of my hockey days, like this is the off-season, you get ready for training camp right now, and then we hit the ground running in a few weeks. 

Fred Diamond: I’m going to bring Dan Kane on in a second here, but before I do, tee it up a little bit. What is the importance of corporate partners, corporate sponsors for a program like you’re running at VCU? For people who are listening, VCU is based in Richmond, Virginia, correct? Not too far from downtown. 

Andy McGowan: Correct. 

Fred Diamond: I’m based in Northern Virginia, about 100 miles north, straight up 95. Been in your campus, driven through it, stopped and walked many times. One of the great things is, a lot of your students are taking jobs in Northern Virginia, or they come from Northern Virginia, the metropolitan DC area, if you will. It’s exciting to hear all the great things that you’re doing. Give us some insights about corporate partnerships. 

Andy McGowan: Corporate partnerships are really the lifeblood for the program. It’s great to be able to be an academic and teach. I come from the business world. I went into teaching as an adjunct a long time ago. I always remember, when I was an adjunct, it was the students really loved like, “Oh, you’ve worked in this business. You’ll be teaching the class. You have real insight into what the course is, what we’re talking about.” 

Now in my role as the director for our Center for Professional Selling, I work closely with our sponsors because I call Dan up all the time asking, “What am I missing? What are those things that we should be teaching our students? How the world is changing?” I know we’re going to talk about all the things in the world that are going on, from AI, how it’s changing it. They’re on the front lines. They give us that insight that we then take into the syllabus, and again, all over my desk here, making sure that I offer that. 

They also come on campus a number of times this year and really have developed relationships with our students. They not only, as a sponsor, get to meet all of the students in the class, because they’ll come in four times during the term, they grade the midterm and the final. They come to class, they get to know the students. They also do our internal sales competitions. As they tell me, it’s like, they build a relationship with them early in the year, and over the course of the year, they’ll come back in the spring for other competitions. They get to know our students, and then they’re calling me up going, “Does that one have a job? I really want to know if they’re available,” and they are taking our top students and putting them right into jobs, which is great. I feel really good about being able to prepare those students. My goal now is really to help our students when they graduate, that they have a position when they exit school. 

Fred Diamond: One of the great things about the sales programs that are being recognized by the University Sales Center Alliance, the USCA, and I’ve interviewed a lot of your peers, Andy, at the various USCA schools, is that they’re going to get jobs. I’m doing today’s interview in July of 2026. I’ve met a bunch of these young adults and I’ve linked into them, or they’ve listened to one of the previous Office Hours shows and linked into me. Now I’ve seen over the last couple of weeks them posting where they’re going to work. One of the great things is they’re going to blue chip companies, such as Curbell. 

Dan, before I ask you about your relationship with VCU, give us an introduction to yourselves. Tell us a little bit about Curbell and tell us about your journey and what you do there. 

Dan Kane: Curbell Plastics, we’re a national plastic supplier of plastic sheet, rod, tube, and fabricated parts. We’re a distribution company, but I like to think of us as much more of a solutions company. You talk about how they’re teaching SPIN at VCU, we’re solving problems and we’re helping people solve problems within their companies. We’ve been in business since 1942. We are supported across the country with 30 locations, many salespeople. I’ve had the opportunity to work here, it’ll be 24 years in February of 2027. 

I started as an inside salesperson. I was inside sales for a couple of years, and then I was given the opportunity to move to outside sales. I did that for like three years. Then in 2008, I was put into a business management role of actually running the business in Virginia. When they asked me to do that, I was absolutely not interested. I really love the sales environment, and so I was thinking, “I don’t want to be a manager,” but then one of my peers and mentors of many years said, “Well, you can still be a salesperson. You’re going to be a sales manager. You’re going to teach people how to do it.” I did that from 2008 to 2025. 

Back in 2020, I got the opportunity to run our Pittsburgh location as well as the Virginia location. I had two locations for four years. I started hanging out with the VCU gang, with Dr. Slough, back in 2018, I think it was, 2018, 2019. I got to know Wayne, and we became fast friends, and we had a couple of pains in common. I did a career fair at VCU and I didn’t meet any students that wanted to have a career in sales. We started talking about that and Wayne said, “You’re the type of person I need to help me get the message out at VCU.” That’s how it started. 

Last year with all the recruiting I’d been doing, Curbell offered me an opportunity to move into this director of training and systems and processes, so recruiting, interfacing with universities like VCU, finding talent, and bringing them on board. 

Fred Diamond: Before we get deep into that, you mentioned that you don’t think of yourselves as being in the plastics world. You think about being in the solutions world. I’ve done over 860 Sales Game Changers Podcasts, and I can confidently say you’re the first person I’ve had on the show who’s a sales leader in the plastics solutions industry. Before I ask you specifically about your relationship with VCU, just tell our audience, what are those things? What are some of the solutions that you bring to your customers? 

Dan Kane: Great question. Curbell Plastics, the vertical markets that we spend our time in, it’s all pretty much manufacturing. It can be from aerospace to machine builders, to food manufacturing, sign printing. Andy knew us in a former life in his printing career with substrate to print on. From a sales perspective of I need to sell plastic sheets, or fabricated parts, or plastic tubes, well, you can do that, you can go to Amazon, you can go to Lowe’s, you can go all over the place. 

One of the things we like to do is really identify the folks, we study our vertical markets, so that if I talk to somebody in a machine builder environment, say, an engineer, I can actually be a trusted advisor to say, “I know your industry, I know your business, and here’s how we’ve helped other people within your space solve problems.” One of the big things with plastic is going to be weight reduction. Think about airplanes, think about vehicles, specialty vehicles, ambulances, for example, how do you make these lighter, more fuel efficient, safer? We get involved with a lot of those conversations with folks instead of saying, “I can sell you five sheets of ABS and the price is $10 a sheet.” 

Fred Diamond: Obviously, if you’re selling solutions, you got to know the industry, you got to know the customer with AI, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. The performance of the selling professional needs to improve. That being said, Andy’s program, again, VCU, you talked about how you first became partnered back at the end of the 2010s, 2018, 2019. What are some of the things that Andy teaches his students, what are some of the skills that they learn, specifically at VCU through Andy’s program, that make these students attractive to you? 

Dan Kane: I’ve been doing this for a long time. I got into sales by accident. One of the reasons I’m so passionate about sales is I went to college at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. I was on a six-year plan. You can laugh if you want, Andy. It’s okay. 

Andy McGowan: I did five, so I’m okay. 

Dan Kane: I was a goof. I tell students this all the time, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a teacher, elementary ed, K-8. I taught eight months outside of college and I was like, “I can’t do this,” and I got involved with the job with the telephone, and I fell in love with it. 

When I would be hiring people a long time ago, they had to teach me sales. These students that are coming out of VCU, they understand the sales process. They understand that it’s hard work. It’s not just, “Hey, I’m a good talker. I talk to people,” because a lot of people think, “You’re great in sales, Dan, because you’re a big talker.” That’s not it. VCU and these other schools are teaching structure, the sales process, that it is a process. It is a profession. It’s not a just-in-case job like I got. It is an absolute marvelous profession. 

When we get students in, you know what we do? We teach them product, because they know the process, and the lingo might be a little bit different, but they understand prospecting. Outbound cold calling, cold calling, relationship building, I’ll bet you, it expedites that learning process a year, just because of the education these students have, and they understand that it’s not just going to be people are just going to flock to you to buy from you. It’s a lot of work. 

Fred Diamond: I like what you just said. That’s one thing we keep hearing time and time again, is that the universities that we’ve come to learn about that are part of the USCA that have these programs, the young adults who are going to graduate and go to work at a company like Curbell Plastics, they have a three-year advantage because they understand the sales process, and they understand a lot of the things that you just alluded to. 

Andy, why don’t you go a little bit deeper on that? What are some of the deeper messages that you want to get across to the companies, like Curbell Plastics, that you’d love to get involved with your program at VCU? Or maybe if they’re out of the area and they’re listening and they may have another university that’s maybe regionally closer or something like that, what’s the message you want to get to them? 

Andy McGowan: I think the thing I want to tell them is what Dan hit, is like we’re teaching them the sales process so that they’re going to interview and bring someone in that has learned sales. We’re working on it in terms of a real message for prospective companies and HR and sales programs, is for those companies that may not be sponsoring programs in their area, that they should get involved because the students are learning the sales process. They are coming out very prepared to walk into an entry-level sales job, whatever it might be, and they’re not having to teach them, “Well, gee, what’s sales?” They have done role plays. They’ve had to learn to prospect. They understand what objections are. They understand how to handle it. They understand how to build a relationship, and it’s not just, as Dan said, I’m a good talker. 

Sure, there are those students that do it, but we try to mold them in terms of there’s a reason we’re doing this. We use the SPIN methodology and we ask those questions because it’s all about the questions you ask. Dan said it earlier, you might be selling plastics, but it’s first selling solutions, and that’s what we’re trying to help them. The sales process is uncovering those problems and then being able to provide solutions. 

It’s a process. The students are getting it and I feel really confident in hearing back from sponsors that the students are stepping out of our program and are getting hired and are successful. Conversely, that’s when I’m calling up Dan going, “What am I missing? What are you seeing that we haven’t taught them that’s helpful?” Dan’s the one that said to me last year, was prospecting. Our class was just teaching them role play, and role play is great, it’s important, you’ve got to be able to do it, but man, when I was selling, and that’s how Dan and I connected. I led a printing company for a number of years. I bought half a million bucks a year from Curbell Plastics in terms of all their materials because we were a grand format manufacturer. I knew their products, or at least one stream of their products, but it’s teaching those students like you’ve got to understand the product, and now we’ve got you ready to go so that when Dan hires you, it’s like, okay, pitch your product, and away you go. 

Fred Diamond: Dan, let’s get specific. You mentioned that your people sell plastics and solutions related to selling plastics to many different verticals, I presume. What are you looking for when you’re recruiting a college student? For the students who might be listening, or parents potentially, what might be some of the characteristics, some of the traits, some of the personality traits perhaps that you have seen would be good for some of these young adults to sell plastic-related products. 

Dan Kane: That’s a loaded question. I love it. I know we only have so much time, so I’ll try to rein it in here. The biggest thing that I’m looking for all the time when I meet young folks, and I’ve got a 22-year-old son and twin girls that are 20. They’re all college-age kids, they’re in school, whatever, but I tell them all the time like, what I’m looking for, I’m looking for students who are curious, who are well put together, who can talk to me without looking at this. Who can talk to me instead of texting me, who can look me in the face and just have a conversation with me, where they’re curious, coachable, eager to learn, they stand out in class because they engage. 

Like I said, I was this knucklehead in school for six years because I was, “I don’t know what I want to do.” Well, sometimes I go to these classes and I can go to a class, in Andy or at VCU, any of these classes, I can stand in front of 30 kids, and within 10 minutes of standing in that class, I can tell what students are there to learn, who are there to get engaged and learn something. I can tell the students that just can’t wait to leave and go to Chipotle, or like, “I got to get the hell out of here.” You can see it in the body language. The students that are asking questions, instantly, there’s a connection. I gravitate because they’re curious. 

The biggest thing I think for a young person today is to be willing to have a conversation with somebody and be able to network, be able to put yourself out and just have a conversation. I think meeting a lot of young folks, we start talking about making out calls or cold calling. It doesn’t have to be scary. We’re just having a talk. We’re just having a conversation. I think that’s the biggest thing for me. It’s curiosity, coachability, and humility. 

Fred Diamond: Andy, I just want to follow up with you. A lot of the students who are in college now, again, we’re doing today’s interview in 2026, let’s face it, they grew up during the pandemic. For people who are not watching on YouTube, Dan picked up his phone at one point and said he doesn’t want the kids who are just sitting there looking at their phones. Talk about that for a minute, Andy. Talk about how do you educate these young adults that you need to engage, you need to physically talk and meet. We’re going to talk about AI. AI can get you pretty far down the path, but it ain’t going to solve all the problems, especially when you’re dealing with a 50-year-old plant manager who needs a whole bunch of plastic for things in the plant that you were just talking to, the manufacturing. Andy, give us some insights into what are you telling the young adults that it’s not just about the tech thing and the social? 

Andy McGowan: Dan said, it’s like, I started sales, I never thought of it, but when I applied for this role full-time and I was talking to my sister, who’s a year younger than I am, I got into sales at 10 years old and I was selling hockey tickets. I’m from Upstate New York, I played hockey through college and my parents had to pay a fee every year. It was 150 bucks a year, which is nowhere near that now because both of my girls played hockey, and we had to go door to door selling. We sold the raffle tickets for a buck a piece and my mother made it so that my brother and I both played, so we got 300 of them. The advantage was, for every ticket you sold, you got to keep the dollar. My mother made sure we sold every last one of them. I remember, my mother worked in the banking industry, she had a little bank box for your checks, and my sister, brother, and I went out, my mother had a territory plan. She mapped out all the streets. We had to go literally door to door, and my brother sat in the car and complained for the whole time, he was the youngest. My sister and I went door to door selling. 

I tell students sales is hard. It’s not easy. You have to learn to talk to people, and you said it earlier about the pandemic. I think that’s the biggest thing that’s different about the students now, that they were in a bubble for a number of years, either in high school or most of them now was in middle school to high school, and they just don’t connect with people. What we really work on is we make them talk to people. We make them do role plays. They have to use AI to help with a script, but you got to go one on one with Dan or another member of his staff and you’ve got to go sell. I always say this, one, sales is hard, and two, it’s hand-to-hand combat job. You have to get out there and you have to talk to people. 

Sure, technology is going to help you, but I do not think sales jobs are going away, and they are always going to be in-person because, where’s my Jeb Blount book? I’ll give Jeb Blount a plug, people buy you, and it’s true. For sales, if I have two people, if everything is the same or very close, I’m going to pick that sales rep that I think is going to be personal, is going to get it done, is going to do the follow up. I’ll even pay more money, pay a higher cost, if I know I’m going to get sales service, which is the end of the process which we’ve started to add in going, “Okay, great, you did the sale. Now what? How do you keep the customer?” Those are the things that we’re trying to get students to understand. 

What I like most is, at the end of the semester, I get a number of students that take the course, and I always ask day one why you’re taking it, and a couple of them are like, “Sounded interesting.” I remember most, I had a young lady, and Dan had her a year ago, she was in a bubble. She was terrified to do these role plays. I make them practice live in class. She went in front of Dan and she came up to me and she was terrified to do it. Dan came up to me after and he goes, “That young lady, she was really good.” I kept telling her and she came up to me at the end of the semester and she goes, “Thank you for making me take this class. It put me out of my comfort zone. I am much more comfortable talking to people and I really could see myself, if I had to go get a sales job, I can do it.” For me, that was the best. 

Fred Diamond: Dan, there’s about 70 universities out there that have programs like this. There’s five in Virginia. What is it about Andy’s students, the VCU students? 

Dan Kane: I have this kind of relationship with five different universities across the country. My opinion of the students at VCU is that they’re just grinders. I use that word, I’m a Pittsburgh guy, and that was always a word I grew up with, like, “You got to be a grinder.” I see these VCU students, they’re grinders. They’re not afraid of hard work. I know a lot of them are first generation college students, which I think gives them a bit of an edge, and they understand that these things aren’t just going to be handed out. A lot of these students are going there because they’re putting themselves through there. I’ve got a young lady sitting 20 feet from me that graduated from VCU in May. She put herself through college. She put herself through VCU, she’s from Northern Virginia, and she decided, “You know what? I’m going to do this. I don’t want to be in debt. I want to go to college and I’m going to be debt free.” First generation college student, she sits 20 feet from me right now, she’s in her fourth week at Curbell, and she was hired as an outside salesperson from VCU, but I think that’s it, it’s the grit. I think they have that grit and they know it’s not going to be a handout. 

Fred Diamond: Andy, let’s talk about that for a little bit here. You mentioned that your dean said that your sales program is one of the big growth programs in the business school. It’s a relatively new program, like we alluded to, where’s the program? Why is it growing? Young adults, like the one that Dan mentioned he just hired, telling their friends. I don’t want to put answers in your mouth, but for a parent to see that their kid is graduating with a job after having spent six figures, that’s a big thing. 

Andy McGowan: It is a big thing. I know the young lady that Dan hired. I teach two classes. I teach consumer marketing and then I teach sales. I had her for both classes and she’s a rock star. She was phenomenal. When D called me and said he hired her, I was, “I’m thrilled, but I know her situation and I know she’ll be fantastic.” 

There are a lot of students like her at VCU, as Dan mentioned, and why is it really growing? Our program is really growing because we are doing things to get them involved. Since I got involved, and taking over from Wayne Slough, he had really set the table and got us into USCA. He had made some inroads with some great partners. I’ve been lucky to just be able to try to grow it because we run more internal sales competitions. Our sales club finally became official in the business school last year. We have over 150 students that are signed up that come to events, not all at once, but we’ll get on. Our sales events, we do it twice a week, which is a club, it doesn’t cost anything to join, they come and we practice role playing. We practice quick pitch competitions. We practice different things so then the best of the best go for our sales team, our competitive team, which competes at events. 

A lot of the kids figure out like they get to go travel to ICSC in Orlando, or NCSC in Atlanta, or we’re going to go to AMA which is in New Orleans, it’s all paid for. The students are like, “Really? I get to go to this competition?” For them, that’s a carrot, that they really work hard. Then they see that because not only do they get to go, but they’ll walk out with internship and job opportunities. 

We came out of a competition last year in the spring competition, three of my students had job offers from that competition. That word gets around, so everybody’s like, “Oh, I got to go hang out with this.” We had a great student, he just graduated, his name is Tyler Lynn. He and the board really networked the heck out of it. They know all the ins and outs. They’re literally walking out with placards at school going, “Hey, join the sales club,” and kids come out of the woodwork to do it. 

The thing that’s also interesting is Wayne had started trying to get other colleges involved. We are now an approved elective for the engineering school so that, as Dan and I were talking, to go get sales technicians. I have a meeting with them the first week of school to go to one of their fairs where I’m going to pitch sales. The dean was interested because he had a meeting with our really well-known health program, the VCU health, they were like, “Yeah, we’re going to start some sales classes,” and our dean’s like, “We have that,” and he’s like, “Really?” We’re going to be meeting with him in the near future, he’s got to set me a date to go talk to the leadership. 

We had a young lady who was a premed student come to a sales practice and she goes, “I’m premed track. I want to go into pharmaceutical sales. Can I be on the sales team?” I’m like, “Absolutely, you can.” Full disclosure, I have a biology degree. I did hardcore biology and chemistry. My parents wanted me to be a doctor, that was my track through college. 

I’m thrilled that we’re going to expand sales, because the other thing I tell them outside of sales is hard is that every company needs sales. No matter what you are, if you don’t have sales, you don’t have a company. Forget all the you need finance and accounting and marketing people. If I don’t have sales, I got nothing, and they’re the last people to get let go. 

Fred Diamond: Speaking about that, Dan, you’re not the only company that’s becoming a sponsor or that has seen the opportunities here. A lot of the good students, like Andy has, and you talked about the competition in Atlanta, we went there, the Kennesaw State National Collegiate Sales Competition, 300 young adults, number 300 I would hire in a second. The talent that you’re training and that you’re educating, Andy, is actually quite remarkable. Dan, here’s your opportunity. Why would someone, one of these elite students, or mid-range, whatever it might be, why would they come to work at Curbell when they have so many in-theory opportunities? 

Dan Kane: They do, you’re right. They have a lot of opportunities. There’s a lot of great partners. What I typically talk to them about, like with the internship program, one of the things I’ve learned a lot is students, they want to be trained. I don’t know if it’s the COVID thing, or this generation of students, they want more training, they want to learn. I’ve had situations where we’ve said, “Okay, listen,” they’re struggling, maybe you set an appointment and they’re like, “I need more training.” Sometimes it’s like, “Well, no, we’re done training with that. Now we just need to do the work.” But a lot of them want a lot of training and they want to understand their stability. 

Curbell Plastics, we have three core values. Our values are respect, integrity, and learning. We have a learning culture at Curbell to where learning is very important. I’m the director of training, systems, and processes, but I’ve only been doing that for six months. There are many people before me. My colleague, Peter DelGado, that hired me 24 years ago, he is the vice president of training now, and retiring. They put all this into place where we’ve got product training, we’ve got sales training, we’ve got our LMS or our CLE is online where they’ve got thousands of courses. We pretty much let them know, I give them the structure of our onboarding process. 

When I came to Curbell 24 years ago, I got a legal pad and a pencil. They said, “Hey, listen to Scott for a couple of days and then get on the phone,” and that’s what I did. Now, it is a structure. It is a curriculum structured out through our LMS and it’s a lot of spoon-feeding information as they go. Then there’s a lot of live time in the field with myself or another peer at Curbell. I just tell them all the time, and a lot of our interns say, “Man, the training here has been awesome,” and I say, “Well, this has just been a 12-week internship program. Think about what it’s like if you just come here to work full time. That training is never going to go away.” I just think that’s a strength that we have. It’s one of the things we pride ourselves on, is really the training piece, but also that it’s a learning culture. I’ve been doing this for 24 years. I learn something about plastics every day. 

Fred Diamond: We alluded to AI, I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on it, but give us a thought or two. Andy, I want to ask Dan first on what is he expecting his selling professionals to use AI for? What are you talking to them about? What should they be doing, etc.? Just give us some general thoughts. Then, Andy, talk about how AI is playing a role in the curriculum. 

Dan Kane: AI is so new and evolving so fast. The biggest thing is, are they at least embracing AI to learn about it? A lot of people have their own, oh, AI this and it’s killing the planet, or some people love it, but it’s like, do you understand what it is? Do you understand how powerful it is? Because you may go into a job interview and say, “I don’t like AI.” You’re going to be passed up immediately. 

It’s just like when the World Wide Web came out. Remember when that came out and you had to get your disk and plug it in? It’s like, learn about it, understand it, appreciate it. Like our ownership says, AI is not going to replace people at Curbell. It’s going to make people at Curbell more efficient in their jobs if you learn it. That’s how we’re looking at it. We’re looking at learn it, embrace it, and just understand it. 

Fred Diamond: Andy, how’s it playing a role in the curriculum? 

Andy McGowan: It’s similar, because talking with Dan, he’s one of the people I lean on when I go like, “Hey, what’s up? What are you using it for?” We have embraced it. Our associate dean, Carol Scotese, at school, this whole past year, she has led the charge with, “We’re going to open our mind and eyes to AI, talk to people.” I’ve been to some workshops. I’ve spent time, I’ve taken a few workshops on it, but how it’s become important with our program is they’re allowed to use AI within some limits and some guardrails. Because as Dan said, it’s going to make you more efficient. 

Man, I wish I could have just punched a couple of things into AI and gotten a whole bunch of research on a company, or give me a draft to script. What questions should I ask? That helps them get material more quickly, but they still have to go through it, read it, and understand it, and then use it when they have a conversation with a prospect or a particular client. It just makes them, I hope, smarter. We got to be careful that the information is correct, but it’s a tool that, as Dan said, I’m hearing the same thing, if you don’t embrace it, you’re going to get passed over. 

Fred Diamond: I want to thank Dan Kane with Curbell Plastics and Andy McGowan with Virginia Commonwealth University for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast and Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. Why don’t you give us a final action step? We typically end every show with something that selling professionals, managers, and leaders who are listening to the show should do to take their sales career to the next level. Andy, why don’t you go first and then, Dan, you’ll bring us home. 

Andy McGowan: Mine’s easy. Dan said it earlier. It’s network. I try to teach my students that, like they come to competitions, or they’re like, “I don’t want to go do that. Professor, really?” I’m like, “You’re going to go to the sales competition because Dan Kane and other people are going to be there because they want to meet you.” That’s the thing that I tell all the students, like we do the competition for experience, but I really push it because it’s a networking opportunity, and because of it, Dan’s there cherry-picking. Like the young lady that he just hired, she was in the competitions and he got to meet her a number of times. Then the students are like, “Oh, you’re right. I really should go to those. I got an internship or a job out of it.” I push networking. That’s my big thing. 

Fred Diamond: That is a great thing. Nothing happens in your apartment that’s going to lead to great things. You got to go out there. You got to meet people. You got to talk. You got to expand the conversation. Dan, bring us on. 

Dan Kane: I would say invest in yourself. You’re going to go get a job, Curbell may hire you, we’re going to train you, but invest in your own learning too. You want to go buy that book, that book about sales, go buy it. Go spend the 12 bucks, go spend the 15 bucks, read it and learn from it and pass it on. I just think that the folks that are willing to invest in themselves, to learn as they continue, don’t just, “I got my job so I’m just going to sit here on the coast now,” become an expert at it. I wish somebody would have told me that 30 years ago. Don’t wait around. 

Andy McGowan: That’s why I have my collection of sales books right here. I’m pushing through them and I give them out. I tell students all the time, “I don’t have time for this class, but here’s a cheap book. Thrift books, go buy this book.” The kids that really get it, they’re the ones that come back and go, “I read that book. That was good.” You can only give them so much before they just overload. 

Fred Diamond: Like we tell people all the time, it’s like, you might be a sales rep at wherever it might be, Curbell, etc., but you are the CEO of your career. What are you doing to continually grow and take yourself to the next level? 

Once again, thank you so much, Dan Kane and Andy McGowan. Thank you for being on the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 877: University Sales Students Must Learn This, Say VCU’s Andy McGowan and Curbell Plastics’ Dan Kane first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is an Office Hours: Sales Professors Unplugged sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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Today’s show featured an interview with Dr. Sterling Bone, Professor and Director of Huntsman ProSales at Utah State University – Jon M. Huntsman School of Business.

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STERLING’S TIP: “Trust your mechanics, trust your process, trust your systems, but find your soul and rediscover your soul of why you sell. I think it’s taking a minute and thinking, why is it that what we do changes lives? How do we really impact? What are the real benefits that we provide?”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: I’ve done about 25 interviews, Dr. Bone, with professors like you who are running programs at universities. We post them on YouTube, we post them on Apple and Spotify, and we also post a couple of times on LinkedIn. Every time I do a LinkedIn post, three to four people will always comment, “I didn’t realize that there were professional selling programs at universities.” 

I’m talking today with Dr. Sterling Bone from Utah State. I’m very excited to get deep into this. We’re going to talk about a lot of interesting things that you’re doing to prepare your young adults. Before I get into my formal questions, give us a brief introduction to you and to Utah State and what you got going on. 

Sterling Bone: Thank you, Fred. It’s really truly an honor to be with you. This is an honorable profession, and I’m so glad to be connected with those that are advocating for the profession and the opportunity. To all the listeners, thank you for caring about the state of professional selling in today’s world. 

My journey started in professional selling. It goes back to my early days as a kid doing those fundraisers door to door. Didn’t see myself as a seller early on, but I grew into that. My first job was in retail, and later I served a church service mission where I was in Columbia in the jungles, evangelizing and teaching religion and faith. But even then, I didn’t see myself in sales. I saw myself in the duty of service. 

But it was after my journey abroad that I returned to my educational roots, which are Utah State University. I got two degrees here, and along the way was a real estate and financial service professional. Then I saw myself clearly in sales at that point. Then pursuing advanced studies realized that, wait, we’re not teaching sales in institutions of higher learning like we should. I would have benefited, as many of I’m sure the listeners would have, knowing that there was professional selling training. It became part of my early career and now my mid-later career mission to build great programs of excellence to train the next generations to sell with integrity and to sell with impact and sell in the ways that we hope that they do. 

Here at Utah State, I’m in my 15th year building a program from the grassroots. We like to say here in the state of Utah, we’re sitting on a goldmine of talent. We have some amazing young people across all of our institutions of higher learning out here in the West. We have a pioneering spirit that is really deeply rooted, and I’ll talk a little bit about that and how we harness that pioneering spirit in today’s seller. It’s really truly an honor to be with you. Excited to have this conversation. Thank you for bringing awareness to this honorable profession. 

Fred Diamond: You’re welcome. When we got to learn more about what the University Sales Center Alliance, the USCA, was doing, we felt such an affinity at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling with you and your peers whose mission was to help young adults go to companies. The great thing about the programs like yours that we’ve learned is you’re preparing young adults to hit the ground running. They may need to learn about the technology or the product that they’re going to be selling, maybe the marketplace, but time and time again, the companies that are sponsoring the corporations that are partnering with you guys tell me that these young adults that we’re hiring, their retention is higher, their ability to start is quicker, their ability to grow into management comes along with it as well, because the education that you are giving is so amazing. 

You mentioned you’ve been at Utah State for about 15 years. What excites you most about where the university’s sales programs are headed? 

Sterling Bone: I think it’s a great thing that we’re part of these programs. I pay tribute to my peers across the country. None of us are working alone. We’re not in competition with one another. We’re really collaborating to really build upon a state of abundance that we have. We have great young people. We have great mid-career, later career. We teach non-traditional students as well. When I say young people, we’ve got great students across the board, let me just say that. 

I’m excited that there’s been a lot of efforts over the last, I would say two or three decades, if not longer, teaching good sales mechanics. I’m glad that we have a foundation laid on understanding and teaching and knowing how to teach and instill in junior sales professionals the mechanics of how to sell. What I’m excited about is that we’ve, I wouldn’t say we’ve graduated from mechanics training and teaching, but I think we’re thinking out of the box a little bit. It’s not just about mechanics. It’s about character building. It’s bringing the human side of selling back in. It’s bringing that personal authenticity, that genuine voice. 

I think today generationally, students that I interact with, they want to be creative. They don’t want to be put into a box. They don’t want to be conforming to a model. I think it’s great that we give them those mechanics and those models, those systems, those processes. But I’m excited about the opportunity, is to unleash the human potential that is in these students and in all professionals. 

I’m currently working on a book that is couched against the importance of human persuasion in the A of AI. I think that technology is fascinating. I’m excited about the technology advancements. I had the unique opportunity earlier this summer to be in the same room with the Artemis II crew. When I say in the same room, I was in a large auditorium in Ottawa, Canada. My travels with some of my research and other involvement took me to Ottawa, Canada. I was in this room, and I’ve been fascinated with this mission to orbit the moon, as I am fascinated with lots of amazing technology and technological advances. 

It was interesting, from the crew’s perspective, while they had been trained on the mechanics of the orbiter and all of the mechanics and technologies that they were needing to execute upon and to have hopefully work, an obviously very dangerous mission, but what they reflected on most at the end of that mission was humanity. It really struck me that as technology advances, we start to question and think about, what is the role that humanity plays in this? Our perspectives change. I’m excited about this next age of sales training that we can really return to the human and really focus on the human side, what I refer to as the soul of selling. 

Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s interview in August of 2026. Obviously, AI is huge, and the tools. We spend a lot of time at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling talking about that, but at its core, the selling professionals who are exceptional, and I’ve met a lot of the young adults who are coming out of these programs at the USCA universities. They have a lot of the rigor of the process, but they’re also passionate. You’re teaching them about the passion that their customers have. Everyone that they’re trying to sell to B2B, B2G, advanced B2C, whatever it might be, there’s a customer at the other side who has committed their career to whatever it might be, to building better houses, to creating better devices for people to sell, for creating technology that’s going to improve healthcare, whatever it might be, that is what their passion is about. Yeah, they’re interested in what is your technology going to do, but they’re really interested in, why do you care, and show me why you care. I appreciate your saying that. 

I’m just curious, you talk to a lot of students who you want to bring into your program. What might be some of the biggest misconceptions some of these students may have about a career in professional selling? One thing I just want to state is we’re all about effective professional selling. Sales isn’t about, what do I got to do to get you to buy this pen? It’s not about getting people to do something that they don’t want to do. It’s about helping them achieve their mission, etc. Talk a little bit about some of the things that some of the students may not understand that professional selling is all about. 

Sterling Bone: I’m glad that you emphasize professional. I think a lot of students enter the art program and enter programs across the country, and for that matter, the world, thinking about sales from an amateur perspective. They’ve seen individuals that have sold, maybe in stereotypical negative ways, that have maybe violated some of the most important laws and norms of integrity and honesty, etc. I don’t want to promulgate all those misconceptions, those negative stereotypes. We hear about them all the time. 

I think a lot of students see sales as a drudgery, a place of lots of rejection. But in reality, what they need to know and what they need to see is how selling is really the engine of the organization, especially when we talk about these professionals. A professional seller has a well-engineered system process. We call that mechanics. With that engine, it’s got all the pistons going. But we need to teach those young junior sellers to recognize that a professional has to be practicing and constantly adapting and evolving and learning. You can’t stay status quo in how you approach your selling. I love how you brought the perspective of the customer. The knowledge and the responsibility to put yourself in that customer’s world and to really be able to think critically on your feet, is so important. 

I think a lot of students see it as drudgery. They worry about the rejection. They see maybe sales as not being a career that they can have the values of integrity and high character. A lot of that is hung up in the amateur model. But when they recognize that, hey, wait, professionals do this for careers and do this by choice, and love this and are excited about this, and well compensated, well rewarded, and advance and grow in their career, then the students are all over it. They see true professionals and they’re all over it. We constantly have to overcome some of those negative stereotypes. I don’t want to promulgate them more here, but I think a lot of it is just helping them recognize that there’s amateur sports and there’s professional sports, and we want to train them professionally. 

Fred Diamond: The reality of companies is there’s no finance department, there’s no logistics, there’s no operations, there’s no legal if there’s no sales. I remember once I worked for a very large software company. I remember sitting in a room with me and two of my closest friends and the CEO and he said, “The last person out the door is our worst sales person.” He said, “That’s what keeps the engine going.” I’ve appreciated that my entire career. 

A big part of your program is working with employers. One of the great things about these university programs is you’re training professionals to go work at blue-chip brand name companies. What are the companies asking you for? What skills do they want to see in the students who they are hiring from the schools like yours through your program? 

Sterling Bone: It’s interesting, I get to, at the Huntsman School, work with amazing corporate partners. They’re the thought leaders that come in and provide a real-world perspective for our students. The longer I’ve been an academic and away from my own professional sales career, I really lean heavily on this type of conversation. I’ve asked directly, even just over the last few months, of our corporate partners, what are you seeing? What are some of the blind spots? What is the edge that we need to give our students? 

They repeatedly talk about the need for students to be able to think outside of just the role of selling, to be able to see themself as revenue leaders. Really understanding how the revenue engine and the revenue operations, and how that interacts and interfaces with all the disciplines or the functions or departments of a company. Being able to recognize that as a seller, you’re not the only part of the engine. You’re not the only important piston that’s needing to fire in its way. You need to think beyond just your vantage point, seeing it from a finance operations standpoint. 

One of the things that we’re doubling down on is putting our sales students in situations where they need to interact with individuals from different departments or different functions of the business, that they need to think about that. They need to be able to work in a team of revenue-minded leaders and to think critically about the entirety of what they’re doing. Not that they’re necessarily going to do that in their first job or their first role, but having that perspective that, hey, we’re all one team and we need to be able to work in tandem with one another and how can I support, and how can I be more supported through the other functions and departments of the organization. Really cross-disciplinary, breaking from some of those silos. 

I was born in the area of sales during the age where sales and marketing were at odds. I think that’s silly. In today’s world it’s like, how can one exist without the other? Even in terms of a branding standpoint, I’m really trying to have my sellers think about them as revenue leaders. I have to share this with you, Fred, because this summer I was in France. I lead a program in France, which is unique. 

My first experience going into the classroom and teaching students in France, and I teach my students from Utah State also in France as part of this exchange collaborative opportunity, it struck me. I wanted to make a big splash in my first lecture. The French, culturally, they’re a little bit more reserved and they’re skeptical, especially with an American coming into the classroom. I came in and I said, “There’s one thing I appreciate about French, and it’s that you have instilled in the business language so many important words. The most important word is revenue.” If you think about the word revenue, in French, when you say welcome to someone, you say bienvenue. It’s welcome, come back, return. 

Thinking about sales from a revenue perspective is how I sell, I want to build a returning customer opportunity. It really changed the discourse that I had with those students in that classroom in France. But it’s really shaped a lot of what we do here at Utah State University with our sales program, is we want our students to sell in a way that they’re such valuable resources and important partners of their customers world that they’re invited back into those conversations. 

Fred Diamond: That’s great. I never thought about the history of the word revenue. You just touched on Utah State. A lot of people listening probably are unaware of your school maybe, but you’ve built a respected program. I think you told me you were recognized as the Associate Member of the Year by the USCA. The USCA, for people who are listening, University Sales Center Alliance, is really about the elite programs, legitimate elite programs with leaders and corporate involvement and things like that. Tell us a little bit about Utah State. What makes your approach unique? What are some of the lessons that other universities maybe could learn from it? Your students also are unique as well. Give us a little perspective on that. 

Sterling Bone: Thank you. I appreciate the plug. Thank you for these great organizations like USCA that helped us grow and spawn. A lot of what we’ve learned is we’ve gleaned from other peer institutions across the state. But we recognized in our population base that we serve, and we have students that come from all over the country, but we are a school that has the mission and the vision to become the premier undergraduate institution in business and economics. Of course, I’m trying to do that in sales first. 

One of the things that we really pride ourselves here at the Huntsman School is that we are not just training great sellers, but we want them to also be great citizens and great humans. We have our pillars where we want to give a rigorous market-driven curriculum. That’s where our corporate partners come into play and help shaping the direction that we go. We have extraordinary networking opportunities. We’re in the Mountain West. We showcase when our partners and employee recruiters come in, and we showcase the mountains and the skiing and the fishing and all things Rocky Mountain-esque. But we really want to give our students that genuine opportunity to interact with our professionals in a unique and less formal way. I think that’s generationally very important to our students. 

We obviously have a competitive national presence. Being a part of USCA and out on the circuit, our students go to competitions and we do our own internal competitions. But I think what makes us unique is that we’ve really instilled and doubled down on our fourth pillar, and that is transformative social impact. We want our students to be in a mindset that they are preparing to give back to society. This is not just a give me, give me, take, take opportunity in sales. There’s going to be opportunities to serve, opportunities to volunteer, opportunities to mentor and bring and uplift the profession. 

We have some programs that are unique in that we go back into the high schools, some of the high schools that are underrepresented and maybe limited in some of the training and resources that are provided. We do this here in the state of Utah. We actually piloted this in Los Angeles with a group called the Brotherhood Crusade, which is an incredible not-for-profit organization that takes students of color and gives them opportunities to advance in their preparation to go to college, go into career. We take our students down as peer mentors. We take them in there, and you’re going to provide some workshops and training. You’re going to rub shoulders with these individuals that are remarkably unique and different and incredibly gifted. But then our students find that they walk away from that having had the reverse happen, that they’ve walked away with the training, the ability. 

We want our students to give back. We want them to be in that mindset of giving back before they leave. We’re not going to try to convince them otherwise down the road. They need to recognize that they’re part of a legacy of sellers across the globe that are professionals, and the best sellers are philanthropic. The best sellers know how to get back and mentor and lift another. That’s one of the things that we’ve really doubled down. We work with our corporate partners to do that, but really it’s led by our students, which I’m really excited about. 

Fred Diamond: That is great to hear. I’m reflecting back on a number of the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged shows that I’ve done. That comes up sometimes, maybe not to the level where you guys are doing it. I remember my interview with David Brauer at West Virginia University. He had his students working on special projects for the Boy Scouts, for example. It goes back to something that has been a theme through this conversation, but also in the world that I live in of professional sales, and that you live in, is that it’s not about the transaction. 

If you’re a sales professional who’s only about the transaction, you could be successful, you could be hugely successful, but you’re going to hit a point where it’s just going to stop. A lot of the great sales professionals that I’ve worked with, and we’ve worked with tens of thousands of them at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, they are passionate about their customers’ business and their customers’ industry. 

For example, we’re doing an event. We’re doing this recording in August of 2026, but at the end of this month, the Institute for Effective Professional Selling is bringing five of our B2B corporate member partners to do a day of volunteering at the Capital Area Food Bank, which is the fulcrum for 700 different food-related services in Washington, DC. I reached out to about 15 partners. They all responded that, we want to send some people, and I can only cap it at 20, but the selling professionals who truly are exceptional are the ones that understand that it’s not just about selling my product to a customer, it’s about being involved. 

I’m in DC also. We work with a lot of people who’ve sold to the government for most of their careers and they’re committed to the warfighter. They’re committed to the veteran. They’re committed to service to the citizen. I love the way you couched that and it makes a lot of sense from where you came from as well. 

Think about some of the students that have gone on to have great success. Again, 15 years, congratulations. That’s pretty remarkable. Good for you. What are some of the characteristics? Give me two or three of the characteristics that you’ve seen in the selling professionals who’ve gone through your program who have had nice, successful careers. 

Sterling Bone: Really, we’re student-centric, student-focused, and that’s something that I’ve really found to be the fuel in my engine as a professor, is working with amazing students. Our students are unique, and I’ll talk about some of the output, but let me talk about the input. Our students are unique in that many of them have served missions for the LDS Church, not all. Again, we’re a public university and we welcome students of all faiths and races, ethnicities, all different backgrounds. But a high percentage of our students have had that time from high school to college where they’ve done something. 

Some students maybe will take a gap year or two, go off to the Peace Corps or do missions or other types of outreach. That’s a big part of our cultural makeup of our students. They really want to have those lived experiences. Then we build upon that as part of our program. But the mantra that I take personally is I don’t want to mess them up. These are good people. Thanks, mom and dad, and all grandmas and special aunties out there that have trained these good people of men and women of character. 

As they launch, what I’ve seen is one of those that are the top performers maybe year one, three, five, 10, 15 down the road. I think a characteristic is that you have to be extremely curious and continuous in your learning. Something we really preach a lot is you need to be constantly adding to your knowledge base, to your expertise. Professionals do this. If I’m a golfer, I’m going to study grass. I’m going to study all the different elements of my playing surface. Similarly in sales, you need to understand your grass. You need to understand all the different elements, and that changes, and climates and things change, and everything else. That curiosity and that continuous learning mindset. 

I think our students, the top performers that I’ve worked with here in our program that have gone to high levels, have been very adaptable. They’ve been adaptable to different economic wins and shifts to different situations where maybe they’ve had to change their channel or their vertical, their industry, what have you, being able to be flexible and adaptable during that, and being open to change, open to technological advances. Those are some of the characteristics of those top performers. I think a lot they bring innately to us in our program, and we just try to make sure that we don’t do damage to what’s already good and turn them loose to the world in a good positive way. 

Fred Diamond: Dr. Bone, if you had an opportunity to be on an elevator with a possible corporate sponsor, all the universities are looking for corporate sponsors for a whole bunch of different things, give me your 30-second pitch on why corporations should consider sponsoring the Utah State sales program. 

Sterling Bone: We love our corporate partners. Thank you for even considering. The model I think is changing and shifting. I started building a partner sponsorship program. What I found is those that have been highest engaged, most engaged, I should say, and that have had probably the biggest ROI to their investment in our program, have been ones that have been able to insert themselves into our team, their thought leaders. 

As a corporate partner, yes, we value your resources. There’s one thing that I found as I’ve interacted with my partners at other universities. There’s not a single one of us where we’re all lacking in resources of some way. If they’re telling you that they’ve got it all, they’re lying to you. Every university wants more faculty, better facilities, whatever it might be, but what I found is that corporate partners, you are really the close-the-gap where there’s resource constraints in higher education, bring your expertise, bring your time, your talent, your treasure. All of that is welcome, but don’t be afraid to raise your hand and say, “I’d like to offer some thought expertise or thought leadership in this area.” 

I know my classroom is wide open for our corporate partners. We open up all of our events to our corporate partners because we know that we don’t have the full body and knowledge base that is out there. We really need that and want that. Yes, it’s your money. It’s your time. Yes, you’re going to hire and recruit good talent and great talent, we hope, here from Utah State. But the more that you’re able to roll up the sleeves and share and mentor students that way, that’s the best recruiting pitch. It’s not necessarily the info session telling you all the great things about your company, but it’s role modeling and showing what that is in a training session. 

Offer up your services to universities in your area and say, “We’ve been tackling the AI integration within our company. I’d like to come share some of the lessons learned, some of the things that we’ve seen from top sellers,” and all those topics are frankly going to be well received in university sales programs because we don’t have all the knowledge base. If anybody professes to have that, I would like to take them up on that, but I see there’s a need for that growing involvement engagement with corporate partners with universities. 

Fred Diamond: I say this to companies all the time, a lot of companies reach out to me and say, “We’re looking to hire people, but we’re struggling,” for whatever the reasons might be. I say, “Go partner with the local university.” There aren’t a ton of them. There’s only about 70 or 80 that are in the USCA that have bona fide valid programs. I know the Sales Education Foundation said there might be a couple more, but 70 or 80 premier, they could always use corporate support. They could always use corporate help to help grow. It’s a great resource for you companies locally to find some great talent and to give an opportunity to communicate more about your company. 

Dr. Sterling Bone, thank you so much. Let’s wrap up here. Just give us a final brief thought, an action step or a thought that people should do right now to take their sales career to the next level. 

Sterling Bone: That’s a big, big question. I think a lot of it is trust your mechanics, trust your process, trust your systems, but find your soul and rediscover your soul of why you sell. I think it’s taking a minute and thinking, why is it that what we do changes lives? How do we really impact? What are the real benefits that we provide? Really ground yourself in that, what I call substance in the foundation of who you are as a seller. Then return to those lessons that you learned early on in your childhood that we sometimes forget, those virtues that were instilled upon us, and allow those to come forward. 

I talk about the service, the humility, the acting with courage, bringing that spirit back into what you do. Find your soul. Something I’m taking really seriously, I’m at my midlife crisis, if you will, as a career professional. I want to find my soul and I want to make sure that my students are able to leave our program, and professionals across the board are truly selling with a soul and bringing their soul forward. That would be my advice. Find your soul, find your why, and then double down on those virtues that you know that are truths that will transcend throughout your career and across any situation that you’re dealing with your customers and industries. 

Fred Diamond: Those are definitely essentials for success. I’m reminded, one of our good friends, Larry Levine, wrote a book called Selling from the Heart, which has got a lot of attention. I’m not sure if you’re aware of the book, but it talks about topics like that. A lot of the selling professionals that I’ve worked with, and we work with tons, from junior SDR-type roles, to AE, to senior VP of sales and CROs at some of the top companies in the world, they’re constantly searching that. They’re constantly trying to figure out, how do I bring more value? Because once they realize that it’s not about them, it’s about the customer, then things shift. But sometimes you fall back into thinking about yourself. It’s like, “If I don’t hit my quota, I can’t pay my rent this month,” or whatever it might be. Then it does come there and then you’re in a state of desperation, etc. Then your performance becomes scripted. 

Once again, Dr. Sterling Bone with Utah State, thank you so much for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast Office Hours. My name is Fred Diamond. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 874: Inside Utah State’s Approach to Building Professional Sellers with Dr. Sterling Bone first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is an Office Hours: Sales Professors Unplugged sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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Today’s show featured an interview with Ann Sojka, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Cincinnati.

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ANN’S TIP: “One huge life motto of mine is no ask, no get. If you never ask, the answer is always no. It takes a lot of courage to be bold and ask difficult questions, but if you don’t ask, you’re never going to get it.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: I’m very excited to be talking to Ann Sojka with the University of Cincinnati. A little bit of Sales Game Changers Podcast trivia. Your mother, who also teaches classes with you, was on our Women in Sales show with Gina Stracuzzi, who runs our Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership. That was in the heyday of the pandemic when we interviewed your mother, but she’s very active in women in sales. That’s where we originally got to her. That was before we started doing the Office Hours shows and that was way before we got involved with the University Sales Center Alliance. Every couple of weeks we post one of these shows. 

I met you at one of the USCA organizational meetings. It’s such a great organization that is helping young adults get educated on professional selling, but also providing great value to companies that are looking to hire selling professionals who are ready to go. One of the amazing things about the young adults who come out of programs such as yours is they’re ready to go. They may need to learn the marketplace and the products and how the company uses HubSpot, Highspot, or Salesforce, or whatever it might be, but how you and your peers at the USCA are preparing young adults is something that we’re really excited about at the IEPS. 

I got a lot of great questions here. I’m excited to learn more about what you’re doing at University of Cincinnati. Give us a brief intro to yourself and tell us a little bit about the program at University of Cincinnati. What do you offer the young adults who go through your program? 

Ann Sojka: A little bit about me. I spent 10 years out in the field as a seller. I worked my way from a sales development program all the way out to the really good life, other than being a professor, which is enterprise outside sales. I did that all within the same company. Once I started teaching, I developed a really strong passion specifically for our students at the Grau Center for Professional Selling at the University of Cincinnati. 

A little foreshadowing, but I pivoted my career. I’m a full-time educator now at the University of Cincinnati. Along with my counterpart, my executive director, Jennifer Barlow, I’m the academic director of the Grau Center for Professional Selling. We are a really large sales program. We offer a sales minor, and our program is interdisciplinary. It’s very inclusive. As a result, we have 400 students each semester in one of our sales classes. Students can earn a sales minor, or they can take the introductory confident selling course, develop some life skills, that’s what we’re really hoping for students to walk away with, and use those to help them interview or feel more confident in their classroom. 

Our program is based around a couple of principles. We believe everybody sells something. We think sales skills are life skills. We believe that sellers are made and not born. We want more people to be equipped with the skills that sales curriculum and sales education helps them learn, hopefully, to go into professional selling, but if not, just to feel more confident in whatever career path they take. 

Fred Diamond: That is amazing. We have listeners all over the globe. For those who don’t know much about Cincinnati, tell us a little bit about the University of Cincinnati. Is it an urban school? Just a little bit of a background on the school. 

Ann Sojka: It’s really unique. University of Cincinnati, it is an urban campus. We have a couple of remote locations as well. It’s a regional campus. A very large percentage of our students are commuters and first-generation college students. That makes their experiences really unique, and in my opinion, and what I teach my students to talk about, it makes them really uniquely qualified to be really successful in sales. We have a really diverse student body and it’s concentrated in a really small campus, since it’s urban, but our students at the Lindner College of Business are required to co-op during the summers. They’re getting real-time experience, and like I mentioned about our program, it’s co-curricular. Our classes are fun because we have engineering students, we have design students, media, all in our sales classes, which makes the conversations really robust and dynamic. 

Fred Diamond: As you alluded to, you’ve lived sales from three different perspectives. You were a student. Then you were in enterprise sales for about a decade. Now, you’re an educator. Just curious, which experience most influences how you teach today? 

Ann Sojka: My students know this about me, Fred, and you’re going to find it out as we have this conversation, I love quotations and mottos. One of the mottos I impart on my students is that no experience is wasted. That’s true for me in each of those experiences that you asked about. 

As a student, I was part of the Global Sales Leadership Society at the Kelley School of Business. I joined because I saw a poster that indicated that most marketing majors get their first job in sales. I said, “I want to get a job. That’s where most marketing majors get their jobs? I’m joining this club because I want to learn how to sell.” It was also, as a student, where I learned this closing line, how to ask for the job in an interview. I teach that to my students to this day. I’ve used it on every interview I’ve ever had, and it’s been a few years since then. That really influences my teaching and my passion for my students and teaching them sales. 

My students love hearing about my experiences in the field. I can talk to them about what it’s like cold calling. I did smile and dial, 100 dials a day, getting hung up on, and talk to them about the victory and the feeling of accomplishment when you take a deal from a cold call to execution and getting the purchase order. I get to talk to them about the value and the fun in building relationships. It’s really fun being in outside sales because you get to entertain your customers, take them to concerts, take them to happy hours, and like a doctor, you’re on call. When data centers go down, it’s usually not from 8:00 to 5:00 on a weekday. I talk to my students about that. They love hearing about those experiences. I always keep in mind too, what do I wish I had known when I was their age that I can help them get ramped up faster and fill the needs of the partners who hire from students? That’s a big influence. 

Fred Diamond: I like the way you said you’re thinking about what can they learn, what can you teach them so that they’re prepared? One of the great things that we’ve learned at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling about what’s happening at the USCA universities is you’re preparing these young adults to hit the ground running. One of the great things is because of how you’re preparing them, the retention that is going to be happening at the companies that do hire is going to be much higher. 

I’m just curious, before we continue the conversation, is there another quote, or two? I’m a big quote guy as well. My favorite quote that’s had even more validity in my life recently is the Henry Ford quote, “If you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” I used to think that was just about business, if I think I can get another client or something, but it attunes to almost everything in life. If I think I can get a meeting, if I think I can do this. I’m just curious, do you have any other go-tos? Do you go by Professor Sojka in front of your students, or Professor Ann? 

Ann Sojka: I do, yes. I go by Professor Sojka, and I have a couple. One huge life motto of mine is no ask, no get. If you never ask, the answer is always no. It takes a lot of courage to be bold and ask difficult questions, but if you don’t ask, you’re never going to get it. I try to impart that on my students. 

Then another one is it’s about showing up. I have it on a post-it right here on my desk. It says, “Being pleasant and having a good attitude is a simple way to be luckier.” I love that, because as salespeople, we generate opportunities by being nice to be around, by building relationships, being trustworthy, and having a positive attitude. I love salespeople because they’re the most optimistic people in the world. They’re solutions oriented. They want to help their customers get out of pain and, by the way, make a lot of money while they do it. Those are a couple of quotes. My students have fun with this. We collect all the quotes every semester. We start off our class, every meeting with somebody giving an inspirational quote of the day. 

Fred Diamond: I’m thinking about one of our clients who said to me recently that his salespeople are really, really good at waiting for the phone to ring. That ain’t going to get you any business, especially now. We’re doing today’s interview in the mid-summer of 2026. I love that, no ask, no get. It’s like the Gretzky quote, “You don’t score any of the shots you don’t take.” It’s all about doing that. 

You alluded to before that sellers are made, not born. What’s something you’ve seen students develop that completely changed your mind about their potential? 

Ann Sojka: I mentioned this before. I was selling for 10 years and really didn’t have a plan to stop selling. I love selling. If I weren’t teaching, I would still be in sales, because it’s fun, it’s dynamic, make a lot of money. But I started teaching at night because there was a need for sales instructors, and I had the experience and I applied and got the job. It was my first semester of teaching where came in, 6:00 to 8:50 at night, after selling all day, teaching a workout class 6:00 in the morning, and I think I’m going to teach these students what they need to know is the sales fundamentals. They need to learn SPIN selling, how to ask good questions, uncover customer challenges, and deliver benefits to solve problems. They need to learn how to negotiate and how to close. I still teach my students that. They do need to learn that. 

But I had a conversation with a student one day that really changed my perspective. She was one of my brightest students. She asked to meet after class because she’s interested in exploring careers in sales. Yes, I love it. It’s working. I asked her, “What do you want to talk about?” 

She said, “I really like sales. I’m interested in it,” but she felt a little intimidated, and she had a little imposter syndrome, because she said, “I’ve never had an internship or co-op during the summer.” She didn’t feel qualified in other words. 

I said, “Well, you’re in my class. What other classes are you taking? What do you do when you’re not at school? Let’s see how we can frame a story.” 

She said, “Well, I take most of my classes at night or online. I’m a commuter. I’m living at home because I’m paying for my own school. I’m the first person in my family to go to college, paying for my own school. I take my classes at night because I work full time at a bank in the day.” 

I said, “How many hours a week are you working?” 

She said, “40 hours.” 

My jaw was on the floor. Talk about somebody who has the potential to hit the ground running in a sales career, because she has a high motor, she’s self-reliant, responsible, can manage competing priorities. She had all the skills that it takes to be successful in a sales career, accountable, and yet it was a messaging problem. 

What I recognized about our students, and my mindset shift in the potential of our students, is they need to see sales in a different light. This is why we have our philosophy. We teach an abundance mindset in our sales program, which is that we are actively dispelling the myth that you have to have a specific sales pedigree. You have to be an extrovert, competitive, cutthroat, pushy, aggressive, persuasive person to be successful in sales. 

Instead, what we focus on educating our students with is that anybody can sell. Everybody should learn sales skills. We help our students develop the confidence to tell their own story, to demonstrate the value they can offer potential employers as a seller. Even though I thought I was just going to teach my students technical skills, oh my gosh, that’s the reason I pivoted to education, and why I’m so passionate, because my students are hard workers. I want them earning a lot of money because I know they’ll work hard and do a good job and solve problems. They need the encouragement and see their potential reflected back at them. 

Fred Diamond: A quick follow up on that. We’re the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. Everybody that we work with is a sales professional, typically B2B, business to business, or business to government, but enterprise. We work with companies like Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Hilton, Gartner, etc. People know that they’re in sales. But I’m just curious, when the young adults matriculate to University of Cincinnati, how many of them are going there to go into your programs? Do they maybe have someone who’s a friend who took a class and they say, “You got to take a class with Professor Sojka. This has been great. I didn’t know I could do this.” Like you said, a lot of first-generation students, so they’re probably working maybe different things as compared to some of the enterprise-type sales things that we’re talking about here. When do they learn, when through the four years, I presume four years, maybe something longer, etc.? 

Ann Sojka: We recruit a lot of different ways. Word of mouth is a big one. I have a lot of students in my classes who say, “I’m taking your class because my friend said I need to take it.” Word of mouth is a big one. We have a lot of co-curricular organizations that also draw students in. We have a competition varsity sales team. You have to take a sales course to join the varsity sales team because you need to learn how to sell. That’s a big reason. We also have a sales leadership club, which is a little more open-ended and developmental. 

I’m a little sneaky and I teach big sections of intro to marketing every single fall. I recruit for our sales program because I want students, again, we’re trying to change the perception in our program. We’re doing a really good job of it, by the way, of that there’s one type of person who’s a sales person, and that there’s one type of sales role. We also are really fortunate to have a lot of really strong partners who we work with. 

They come, we do a sales expo, just a sales-focused career fair. Every fall and spring, we usually have at least 50 partners that all of our students go to. When students, they see, “Hey, there are jobs, there’s a career fair just for sales, that must be an indicator.” They hear from their friends that the sales class is fun. There’s no final exam. You do a sales role play instead. We talk to each other all the time. We practice interview skills. When that word of mouth gets around, in addition to our other faculty and other departments really recognize the value of the skills in our sales program. 

Our finance folks, they realize AI can do some things that we’ve been teaching our students they have to do. But what AI can’t do is build relationships and build trust. We need our students to be equipped with those soft skills, competencies, people competencies, so that they’re really marketable to recruiters. 

Fred Diamond: Let’s follow up on that with the companies that are participating in your programs, your corporate partners. You mentioned you had about 15 or so that participate. Maybe there’s more. What’s the value for them? Are these employers typically big in Cincinnati or are they from the Midwest or all over the country? Who are you looking to get involved? Which ones are getting involved? What’s the message you want to get across to them? 

Ann Sojka: A couple of things are valuable. One note, in our sales expo, we have 50 people come through. Then we have different tiers of partners. But a huge value that our partners see and get value out of is when they come and interact with our students in our classrooms, and when they act as buyers in the final sales role play. I said there are about 400 students every semester in our sales classes. They all have to do a sales role play, at least one. Our partners are really excited to see our students in action. I think that is a big distinction versus hearing a student in an interview talk about, how would you build rapport? How would you close a deal? Our partners get to see our students in action. 

Some of our partners assist with the varsity sales team. Those are our most elite group of sales students, who are really, really serious. Otherwise, they get a lot of opportunity to recruit from our role plays and from visits to our classroom. 

Fred Diamond: What kind of positions are they recruiting for? 

Ann Sojka: Great question. Everything from business development programs that feed to outside sales to business relationship management. More of like a post-sale relationship type of position. Another good benefit of working with the University of Cincinnati, we’re in a metropolitan area. That gives our students an advantage because they don’t have to travel somewhere for their co-ops or internships. We have a lot of big companies that are local who recruit. We have a lot of students who want to move away from Cincinnati or who aren’t from Cincinnati. We have partners who relocate students across the country. What I like to think about University of Cincinnati, it’s a really diverse student body. There are students who are happy and excited to cold call. There are students who want to do more of account management. We find partners recruit for all of those positions. 

Fred Diamond: Ann, love your energy. Sales is about energy. You mentioned various types of people, extroverts, introverts they still have to have the same energy, that they are willing to put in the time. If you’re an introvert, a lot of introverts are great at sales because they can think strategically about how to do the business and who needs to be involved. As you know, in enterprise sales, it’s not just a phone call and, “Gee, would you like to buy a million dollars’ worth of stuff?” Yes, great. Good. it’s a process that may take months, years, and you may have to speak with six, seven people, and you need financial thought through the process and strategic thought. There’s a lot of ways to go. 

If you had the opportunity to speak to a parent, they came to you and said, “My child registered to go to University of Cincinnati. I never thought of sales. No one in our family is in sales. Why should they take your classes?” I’m just curious, what would you say to them? 

Ann Sojka: Frankly, same. My parents are teachers. Nobody in my family was in sales until I was in sales, and I had no experience selling until I had my first sales job. I think about this pragmatically, everybody needs to interview. I think every student that I talk to that is enrolled in a college and in a business school wants to get a job. An interview is selling yourself. If nothing else, if you take a confident selling class, which is our introductory course offered at least eight sections every semester, your student will be equipped with the confidence they need and the skills to sell themselves in an interview. That’s a low-hanging fruit. 

When it comes to considering a career in professional selling, one of the objections I get a lot is about, “I don’t know about living on a quota. I’m concerned about making commission. Don’t sales people get laid off really quickly.” Nobody knows the future, but I’ll say for myself, I spent 10 years at the same company in sales and progressed from a sales development program to the best job in the world, other than teaching, which is outside enterprise sales. I did that for five years. I was never laid off and I made a lot of money. I like to tell my students, listen, I am not competitive. You don’t have to be competitive in sales. I am ambitious and I would describe myself as coin-operated, but really, I went into sales because I like helping people. 

A big philosophy that we have in our business program in the Lindner College of Business is that our students are problem solvers. That’s what selling is. A good seller needs to know how to ask the right type of questions, uncover a customer need, and then deliver value to solve that problem. By being the seller, you help your customer solve their problem faster and you get to make money. 

Fred Diamond: A thing we usually add to the end of that is having the skills and ability to be in a position to communicate that value that you uncovered. One of the challenges right now is that with AI, and it’s been like this for years, the customer can get whatever information they want to know off of the internet and of AI. If they want to know your product strategy, they don’t need you to come in for half a day to present it like you and I might have done in our previous roles. But they could just type in, what is the product strategy for company X, whatever it might be. As a selling professional, you need to be able to think ahead, where your customer might be going to, and it’s not hard to do that, but it requires work. Then you put yourself into the opportunity to communicate that value. 

Ann Sojka, is there anything else that you want to get across that we might not have covered today? 

Ann Sojka: I hope that I have conveyed a lot of enthusiasm and passion for not only the sales profession, but for the potential of the students in the sales program at the University of Cincinnati. These students are hardworking, like many college students, they’re hardworking, they’re gritty, they’re resilient. They have what it takes to be really successful and contribute to student organizations. I’m really passionate about the potential of our students. I want to see more young people go into this extremely lucrative, challenging, and rewarding career, because I think it’s so fun. It’s so fun. 

Fred Diamond: Yeah, it is the greatest profession. We talk about this all the time, is that we think the most important job in every company is the selling professional. There are no jobs for the accountants, and there’s no jobs for the finance people, no jobs for HR or marketing if things don’t get sold. 

Before I ask you for your final action step, do you have one more quote you want to pull out that you want to impart upon us? 

Ann Sojka: I want to paraphrase because this is part of my educational philosophy, and it comes from Stephen Covey, and it’s his perspective on leadership. This really drives how I interact with my students. He said that leadership is seeing another’s worth and potential so strongly and communicating that so clearly to them, that they begin to see it in themselves. That’s what I see my responsibility as an educator to be. I want my students to see the potential and I want to make it so explicit to them that they see it in themselves and they feel confident to go out and take a risk, try something new. 

Fred Diamond: You know what, Ann? That comes through in today’s Sales Game Changers Office Hours podcast. There’s no doubt about your passion. One of the cool things since we’ve been doing the Office Hours shows is that the educators that we’ve been speaking to, they want their students to have amazing futures. We all know that the potential in sales, it’s not going to be easy, there’s going to be bumps and you may be working really hard on a prospect and they go silent and you’re wondering, “What did I do? What do I need to do?” You may be making up things about your pipeline. But if you stay with it, if you work hard, if you really put yourself into the athlete’s mindset of what should I be doing to practice, and you do a lot of that. 

You mentioned the teams, and to go to the competitions, you might have to practice a role play like 500 times to get it down. That’s one thing that amazed us at the IEPS, when we started going to the competitions, is how amazing these young adults were. I’ll give you an example. I went to a competition where Gartner was the main sponsor, and Gartner does a lot of work with the universities at the USCA. I’ve been a Gartner customer 10 times. The students that I saw at the role play, it was the National Collegiate Sales Competition in 2025, even the worst student was great, and was even better than the best Gartner sales rep that I’ve seen. 

Ann, it’s been great talking to you. Congratulations on the success and the continued success. Give us a final action, something specific selling professionals listening to today’s show must do to take their sales or sales leadership career to the next level. 

Ann Sojka: I’d say take action. Go do it. Fail fast. It ties back into my no ask, no get mentality, which is you can do all the account planning, you can rehearse your pitch over and over again many times, but until you go talk to a customer, you don’t know if it’s successful. I got one more line for you, Fred. You either win or you learn. That’s what happens when you try. You either get the deal, you get the call, or you learn what didn’t work. Then you go back to the drawing board. 

Fred Diamond: Once again, I want to thank Ann Sojka from University of Cincinnati. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 868: Building Sales-Ready Graduates at the University of Cincinnati with Ann Sojka first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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Today’s show featured an interview with Dr. Andrew Loring, Associate Director, Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute and Senior Lecturer at Texas A&M University.

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ANDREW’S TIP: “We can’t be perfect at everything. There are areas of the sales process where we’re naturally going to excel, and others where we need to double down and work a little bit harder.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Dr. Loring, we’ve done about 20 special episodes where I’ll interview a professor, an executive director of a university program. Either it’s a sales major, a minor, or a certificate in professional selling, educating young adults to go work at the companies that are part of the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. Great companies that are doing B2B, potentially B2G, business to government, sales. I got to say, the work that you and your peers do to prepare these young adults for careers in professional selling is world-class. 

It’s great to have you here. I’m very excited. I’m excited to learn more about some of your vision for the University Sales Center Alliance, specifically what you’re doing at Texas A&M. Why don’t you get us started? Tell us a little bit about what’s going on at Texas A&M. Tell us a little bit about your program. 

Andrew Loring: I’m the associate director of the Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute at Texas A&M University. We’ve been a recognized program for the last 10 years now. Actually, last October in 2025, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary. It’s been a really exciting milestone in everything that we’ve achieved over the last decade in sales education. 

Fred Diamond: It’s quite remarkable. Actually, there’s a number of schools in Texas. I’ve interviewed Dr. Howard Dover. I interviewed Semira Amirpour from University of Texas at Dallas. Of course, Dr. Linda Alkire at Texas State. Why is Texas such a great home for some of these programs? 

Andrew Loring: I’ll add, Fred, that we’ve actually got more than one sales program at Texas A&M University now. Willy Bolander heads up a program in the College of Engineering as well. There’s sales all over the place in Texas. 

As you may see in the news, Texas is booming economically. College Station is right in the middle of what some people refer to as the Texas Triangle. Within three hours of College Station are about 15 million people. DFW, Houston, and Austin are just booming. Companies are moving in and they need to hire great sales candidates. 

Fred Diamond: Actually, I neglected to mention Baylor University. We’ve had Dr. Andrea Dixon and Lane Wakefield, and they have multiple programs there as well. Great stuff is happening down in Texas. As some people know, my daughter recently moved to Austin, so I’m excited to learn more. 

We’re doing today’s interview in July of 2026, middle of your term as president of the USCA. You’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of university sales education. What changes have you seen in the past, you mentioned 10 years that your program has been around, that have had the greatest impact? 

Andrew Loring: We’ve certainly seen a lot of changes. I’d say that more and more companies have come out of the woodwork, so to speak, sharing the great opportunities that they have for our students, for young graduates. The change specifically that I’ve seen are more and more companies wanting to hire sales students off of college campuses. That’s been a dramatic shift. Ten years ago, you’d always have the big players that were there. But more and more lately, we’re seeing companies and really obscure industries that are really interesting, that are great places for our students to go work. 

Fred Diamond: When these companies get the message, I’ve done a couple interviews with your peers and sponsors of their programs, and when they get the message, they’re recruiting and hiring young adults that are three to five years advanced from new employees who might not have gone through your program. They have to learn about your technology and your offerings and your sales process, but they understand sales process, they understand solution selling, they understand the various models. One of the great things about these young adults is they’re not afraid. They’re fearless in getting on calls, on doing interactions with prospects. 

As the president of the USCA, what trends are you hearing from the sales programs across the country that really should resonate with these business leaders that should be sponsoring and attracted to these programs? 

Andrew Loring: For any recruiter or someone who works in HR, sales executive, attrition is a big problem. Anytime you hire a new salesperson, you run a risk of them getting there and realizing, hey, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be, and then they quit. That’s where the USCA and sales programs come in and play a huge role, because our graduates are walking into roles at companies that they’re already familiar with. Perhaps they’ve interned with that company, or at least they’ve met recruiters over, in some cases, several years, and so they know exactly what they’re getting themselves into. As a result, they’re quitting far less. Companies, they couldn’t ask for something better than a student who knows what they’re doing and they’re hungry to get after it and achieve their goals and work hard. 

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. Losing an employee, it could be six figures, especially for some of the roles. That’s one of the things that we’ve been pitching as well, is it’s a strain on a company, costs a lot of money to recruit. They might be taking a shot, but when the young adult has the preparation, they want to be there. They know they’ve been exposed because a lot of these young adults who go through your programs, it’s not like senior year last semester. A lot of them that we’ve spoken to, they get it. They might not know when they go to college, but maybe after the freshman year or early on in their career, they begin to see what your programs offer. Even more importantly, the career opportunities that come after that. They’re hitting the ground running. 

Texas A&M runs one of the nation’s premier programs. Tell us a little bit about why it’s such a premier program. What do you think distinguishes some of the great sales programs at the USCA from others? 

Andrew Loring: One of the big benefits of the USCA is our accreditation. We meet the same accreditation standards as all other USCA schools. It’s hard in some regards to say that we’re better. I don’t believe that we’re any better than other programs. I will say that we tend to focus more on students innate personality characteristics and help them increase their emotional intelligence and relate that to different companies and jobs that are out there. 

As we know, we all have different personalities. Some people are better suited for hunter roles, while other students are better suited for farmer account management roles. We try to do a real deep dive into emotional intelligence and personality to help our students understand where they best fit in the wide world of sales opportunities. Again, being in the middle of the Texas Triangle, our students will go to oil and gas opportunities in Houston. They’ll go do everything in DFW. They’ll go do tech in Austin. It’s really important that they understand the differences between B2C, B2B, B2G, hunter, farmer, all the different types of sales roles that are out there and how they’ll progress over their careers in those different roles. That’s where we tend to focus, is more on that personality. 

Fred Diamond: I want to go a little bit deeper into that. 10 years ago when the programs were getting kicked off, did you think that emotional intelligence was going to be such a critical thing? It comes up so frequently on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. We’ve even had the author of the great book, Selling with Emotional Intelligence, Colleen Stanley, on the podcast many times and on our stage. Talk a little bit more about how the work that you do, because you’re absolutely right, if you keep pushing someone in sales to do the wrong thing, they’re probably going to fail. I love that you’re doing this work when they’re in college, because they’ve already acknowledged that they want to go into sales. Now you’re getting even more specific in setting them up for a career of success. 

Andrew Loring: I’ll give you an example, Fred. All of us, we do role playing with our students. In those role plays, we follow a sales process, just like all sales people do, or most sales people should. In that sales process, I tell my students that we, as human beings, we can’t be perfect at everything. There are areas of the sales process where we’re naturally going to excel at, and there are areas that are going to be more challenging for us. 

A very simple example is the natural extrovert. They’re going to be really strong in that meeting opening category, the very beginning of a role play in that rubric line item, where they’re knocking on the door with excitement and hunger to meet someone, small talk comes naturally to them. Whereas an introverted student might struggle at that beginning, but then they pick it up when it comes to the discovery. They’re incredibly good at asking questions and listening intently and coming up with content that backs up the benefits of those needs that they discovered. 

We take the emotional intelligence down to that level, where we break down each step in the rubric and help our students align their innate personality characteristics to each line on the rubric. They go into our role plays with an understanding that there are some areas of that rubric that they’re going to do naturally better than others. They know where they need to double down and work a little bit harder in preparation because it doesn’t come so naturally to them. 

Fred Diamond: As a follow up, talk a little bit about the types of companies that are recruiting from Texas A&M. I love the way you’ve just made that distinction between the extrovert and the introvert and so many of those extroverts are great in the early stage. They’re fearless on the phone. Maybe they’re athletes, they’re used to rejection, so to speak, and it doesn’t really bother them. But the introverts, they maybe are better at the more complex deals where they have to talk to multiple people and think out the strategy. It’s not just bursting through. I’m just curious, the grads at Texas A&M, where do a lot of them go work? 

Andrew Loring: Where our students go is pretty diverse. We’re agnostic to industry. We are named after a company, Reynolds and Reynolds, and Reynolds and Reynolds, they’re an automotive dealership solution provider and they’re based all around the country. It’s exclusively B2B and highly complex. They go in and they help car dealerships understand what needs and solutions they can provide with their award-winning technology. That’s much longer sales cycle, but our students will also do tech sales. A lot of them will go to Austin into BDR type roles. Many will go down to Houston in oil and gas. Some of our students go to Baker Hughes and other oil and gas companies. 

We do a lot in logistics and most everyone does insurance. A lot of our students go to Gartner, PepsiCo, and AT&T, so all the major players. But we also have been getting in recently with a lot of healthcare. We have two fabulous partners in healthcare with AbbVie and Amgen and they’ve been tremendous supporters of our program because our students have really found a niche in their desire to go into healthcare sales type roles. 

Fred Diamond: That is great. That is a wide range of industries. What’s even cooler about it is, you mentioned some companies, Gartner, PepsiCo, AbbVie, these are companies that are doing some important things. As I tell selling professionals all the time, you’re providing a service. There might be attraction at that young age about the money you can make and the brands, etc., but sales is the part of the business that really makes things go. For the types of companies that you just talked about, to be committed to working at the university level to bring those people into their process, it’s pretty impressive. I’m just curious, how do you communicate to those companies about getting involved? What really is it that attracts them? 

Andrew Loring: The easiest way to put it is that we help them hire great candidates that don’t quit, so it reduces their attrition. Obviously, companies have one of two choices. They can either hire an experienced salesperson or they can hire a college student who’s about to graduate. Our pitch is that our students are much more malleable, so they’re hungry and they’re willing to learn your company’s ways from the ground up. Companies love it. They love it. They’re willing to come on campus and meet our students earlier and earlier, as early as sophomore year in some cases, and keep that relationship going over time until graduation so that students are ultimately walking into a role that they feel like they’ve been working at for the last two years, which is pretty incredible. 

Fred Diamond: It’s 15 minutes into the interview. We haven’t brought up AI. AI is changing how we prospect, research, communicate, everything in the sales process. How are you using AI to prepare students? Where does AI come into your curriculum? 

Andrew Loring: I’m glad you brought this up, because this is a hot button topic of the USCA. In fact, we brought in several AI vendors to our fall meeting last year. We’re using AI in the same way that all other programs are using it. It’s as a supplement to help students prepare for human-to-human face-to-face role plays. We use it as where our students will role play with an AI agent in an avatar. They’ll do that with piece by piece of the sales process ahead of their face-to-face role plays. That’s how we’re exclusively using AI. 

Fred Diamond: We talked about sponsors a second ago, and it’s amazing. Every time I post an Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged show, I pop it up on LinkedIn, invariably, I’ll get three to five people who will say, even though we’ve done close to 20 shows, gee, I didn’t know that universities had sales programs. It’s a relatively new thing, if you will. The USCA, the University Sales Center Alliance, you’re bringing together universities and corporate partners. You just mentioned some blue-chip world-class companies. You mentioned that they’re looking at some of your young adults when they’re sophomore and early on in their careers. Talk a little bit more about what do you expect from corporate partners? What is your recommendation for other USCA members to be of more value to get more corporate partners involved? 

Andrew Loring: The number one thing that any company that’s listening to this podcast can help all schools with all programs is hire our students, be willing to hire off college campuses and maybe let go of the experienced hire because of the baggage that they come with. Open your mind to the university hire. I promise you that you’ll have a good experience no matter really wherever you go. 

For universities, for programs, my ask for all of them is to make it easy for companies to engage on campus with you. Invite them into your classrooms. Invite them to your events, whether it’s a career fair, a networking type of event, or maybe you have your own sales competition. Make it easy for them to come on campus, because at the end of the day, they’ve got to drive to your campus whether it’s close or far, they’re giving up time to do that, and they obviously want to see a win-win, some value in their time, and that is meeting your great students. It is 100% worthwhile. We’ve been doing it for a decade and we’ve had tremendous success. 

Fred Diamond: One of the cool things about doing these particular interviews, the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged, is that you’re committed to helping the young adults get their careers started off in a great way. We all know, everybody who’s listening to this, that sales is a great way to do it. As a sales educator specifically, what are some of the skills that you desperately want to ensure that they are leaving your program with? 

Andrew Loring: I love that you asked that. It’s funny because every single year we host an advisory board meeting with all our corporate partners. I ask them that same question. I’m like, what do we need to be teaching our students this year that we didn’t incorporate last year that are going to help them get better prepared? 

What’s interesting to me is every single year it’s typically the same thing. They say, I don’t care about the technology. We can teach them how to sell. We can teach them about our products and services. What we can’t teach them are the interpersonal skills. Their ability to build a natural, genuine relationship, their ability to ask outstanding questions and connect those to future problems that could be solved. That’s what they can’t teach. That’s what they look for. That’s why we’ve doubled down on our ability to help coach and develop our students in their interpersonal skills. 

This is where AI is helping play that role, is it’s giving them more repetitions, albeit with an AI avatar. But still, they’re practicing the oral communication, which is incredibly important to all these companies. They want them to be able to have a good, genuine conversation with anybody as they sell. That’s where we’ve really doubled down and that’s ultimately what companies have wanted to see over the last decade and continue to want to see. 

Fred Diamond: If you’re going to graduate a young adult in the sales program, you don’t expect that they know everything about the beverage industry. If you think about Pepsi, they deal with so many different entities that they sell to. You need to interface, as a selling professional, with multiple people, especially as we’re talking the B2B and the complex. You need to talk to finance people. You need to talk to tech people. You need to talk to other sales people, depending on what your role is going to be. I love that you use emotional intelligence. To be perfectly frank with you, Dr. Loring, I think you might be one of the first Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged guests who have focused on that. We believe it’s such a critical thing. It comes up time and time again. 

You’re the president of the USCA, University Sales Center Alliance. Are more universities coming to you? Where do you see the growth of programs? If someone were to come to you, what might be your advice? 

Andrew Loring: Most often we have new programs. Faculty that are just starting at a new university and have been charged with starting a sales program they typically find at the USCA, because that’s one of the primary functions of why we exist, is to support sales programs and their growth and development over time. 

I want to call out James McIlroy at the University of New Hampshire. He’s a current board member of the USCA and he created something called the Sales Program Maturity Model that is actually a map where you can look at your program on a bunch of different variables and see where you land today and then you can chart where you want to be in the future. We use that maturity model to help programs, whether you’re new or you’ve been around 20, 25, 30 years, measure your success today and then help you improve in certain areas for tomorrow. That’s the major success area that we try to bring to all programs who are involved with the USCA. 

Fred Diamond: What’s your favorite part of your job, not of the USCA, but of running the program at Texas A&M? 

Andrew Loring: There are several things. The first thing that comes to my mind, I love being in the classroom. I love teaching and facilitating. I do a lot with emotional intelligence. I’m a CliftonStrengths Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach. I’m a DiSC Certified Practitioner. I do a lot of that. One of the favorite things I have are students who sit in the class in an entry level professional selling class having a negative and a skewed view of sales day one. They’re like, yeah, I’m only here because it’s a required course. I don’t really want to be here. Then soon, by the end of the semester, they learn about all the things that we talk about and they leave saying, this is amazing. You completely change my perspective on sales and sales careers. That’s probably the most rewarding, the most fun thing. 

Fred Diamond: Here’s an opportunity for you. If a sales executive or a sales leader within two hours of College Station is listening, give their pitch. Tell them why they should get involved with your program, either at the individual level, if there’s a spot, or at the corporate level. 

Andrew Loring: I’d say no matter where the school is, I would look at the proximity they are to sales programs. It’s not just about Texas A&M. I’m going to call out all the USCA schools. They’re all listed on our website. If you recruit in a general geographic area that’s close to any USCA program, the faculty’s contact information is on our website. Please look them up. But the pitch to them is just hire the students because they will walk in knowing more than anybody who has graduated from a non-sales program. There’s a huge advantage. This has been proven in the research over time that sales program graduates, they ramp up faster and they turn over less. They quit less. That’s the first thing you should think about, is always hire from a sales program directly. 

Fred Diamond: You’re the president of the USCA. You’re doing a great job, by the way. Part of the goal is to get the message across to corporate America, and you’ve done a great job over the course of today’s show, of the value of it. Where do you want to see us in five years from now? What is there, about 85 universities that are part of the USCA? 

Andrew Loring: That’s correct. 

Fred Diamond: Where do you want to be in five years from a university membership perspective and maybe from a corporate sponsorship perspective? 

Andrew Loring: We had our first international meeting in Europe, and in Europe, there’s a big need. Our world is getting smaller and smaller and doing business globally is happening more and more like it has for the past 15, 20 years. From an expansion standpoint, obviously we’re trying to plant a bigger flag in Europe, get more European schools involved, and we’re doing the same thing in the United States. But the area where we want to really make real progress is spread the USCA brand in the corporate world far more than we have. 

The reality is we will go to SHRM events, Society of Human Resource Management events, and just talk to companies and it’s mind blowing how few companies that hire for sales don’t know that sales programs exist. Now, I get that sales programs have really only been around for the last 20 years or so. They’ve really taken off in the last 15. I understand that we’ve got a lot of work to do. But from a USCA mission, one of our marketing strategies over the next year is going to be shouting from the rooftops that we’re here. We exist and we’ve got great students for you. 

Fred Diamond: Getting to know the universities, speaking to the students, the work that you and your peers are doing is a great service to companies. I love the way you talked about retention, making sure that the young adults going through your programs get into the right sales career, and they may learn different things once they get out there. 

As a matter of fact, this morning, again, we’re doing today’s interview in July 9th of 2026, we did a program at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling this morning. We had about 200 sales people. One of the young adults asked me for advice. I said, get to know your company. Get to know everything about your company. I know you’re in sales. You’re probably going to learn about the product. You’re probably going to learn about the industry. But understand what finance does. Understand what operations does. Because one thing that your customer wants from you, sales guy or lady, as the face of the company is, how do I submit invoices? How do I get tech support? How do I track my orders? That’s a role that you do. Get to know the whole company. 

Dr. Andrew Loring, Texas A&M College Station, University Sales Center Alliance, great job. Is there anything that you want to get across that we haven’t spoken about as we wind down today’s interview? 

Andrew Loring: I just want to say thank you, Fred. Thank you for having me on this podcast. It’s been great. If anyone who’s listening to this wants to connect to Texas A&M, to our Sales Leadership Institute, or the USCA and other schools, please, at any time, reach out to me. I’m happy to help. 

Fred Diamond: Great job. Congratulations for the continued success. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 865: How Texas A&M Grads Stand Out in Professional Selling with Dr. Andrew Loring first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is an Office Hours: Sales Professors Unplugged sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Find Brad on LinkedIn. 

BRAD’S TIP: “You’ve got to be coachable, you’ve got to have grit, you’ve got to be willing to continue to learn and grow as everything evolves.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Today’s show is a special Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. Brad Anderson with Cal State Fullerton, we’ve done probably close to two dozen shows where we’ve interviewed directors of professional selling organizations at universities. A lot of these universities are part of the University Sales Center Alliance, and they’ve been great shows. We typically talk about how you’re teaching the students, what the curriculum is, how you’re working with sponsors, and anything else that would be appropriate. It’s great to have you on the show. 

It’s interesting, you had mentioned to me that you’re one of the only schools on the Western side of the United States. I went back and I checked and yeah, you are the first professional sales leader at a university that we’re interviewing on the West side of the United States. I know we’re going to be talking about that as part of the context today, but it’s great to see you here. Thanks for being on the show. 

Tell us a little bit about your journey to running the selling program at Cal State Fullerton. Tell us a little bit about your sales career before you got into academia. 

Brad Anderson: I didn’t actually want to go into sales. I actually thought I wanted to be a teacher and then learned how much they didn’t make to start their salaries and went into business instead and changed my degree. I got a degree in economics from the University of Redlands. It’s actually management science. I changed that also my senior year. Then started my career with Carnation Company, which was purchased by Nestlé right after I started with them. 

It was really my 30 years at Nestlé, I started carrying a bag in this Riverside-San Bernardino sales area, similar to some of our sponsors like Gallo, Southern Glazer’s, and Kellogg’s. Basically worked my way up through the management there. I became a trainer, then a manager, then an account manager, then I ran the LA region. Then I went to our headquarters. I was one of the first people at Nestlé in the sales side to have a personal computer, which got me into what was called sales technology at the time. I basically went to our headquarters. I was a director of sales planning, got into our order entry system and forecasting for salespeople, things like that. 

Then this new thing called category management started in CPG. I got hooked up with Brian Harris, who started Apollo and started the category management, basically vernacular for CPG. That became my road to more management and more experiences at Nestlé where we worked with our retailers. I got very involved with Nielsen, with IRI, and with Intactix on their space management, the category management, managed a whole team, started the team at Nestlé for category management. 

Then when we purchased Purina in 2001, I transferred over to Purina, started actually training people how to sell pet food in a grocery store and also how our salespeople could sell pet food, because a lot of them came from Nestlé and didn’t sell as much pet food. We had a learning center. We brought people in, talked about consumer, and so it really started my teaching. 

At the same time, I was also teaching at a junior college here in California, got my teaching credentials, worked there for about four years, but it got to be too much. Because of travel, I couldn’t teach and travel, we didn’t have Zoom at the time. Then I started working with Purina on tools and automating all of the sales tools. Basically, we created some things for automated assortment planning, space management, we used the tools that were available from Intactix, IRI, and Nielsen. We also did an automated sales presentation. Basically, an account manager could come in, put in their account, the product, and a few other pieces of information and it would spit out presentations that they could then automate, edit, use, whatever. 

Then I came to Cal State Fullerton, because I took early retirement, came to Fullerton and replaced a former Nestlé co-worker as the director of the Sales Leadership Center. I’ve been here almost nine years now. 

Fred Diamond: I’m based in Northern Virginia. Nestlé, one of their headquarters is based not too far from me in Rosslyn. As I mentioned to you before, part of the pandemic, we had one of your peers, Dominic Strada, who was on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. Before the pandemic, I used to do the interviews in-person. We actually did his interview at Nestlé’s headquarters down in Rosslyn, Virginia, which is right across the river from Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and had a big, beautiful vista of the D.C. area from that. 

It’s interesting you’re talking about sales technology and tools. A lot of the great big brands were first in the game with sales automation tools and some of the things that you had alluded to. Now with AI, a lot of things are becoming more spread. It was pretty interesting to see that you were way early in the game. 

Cal State Fullerton, first of all, tell people where exactly that is. We have listeners around the globe. It’s interesting that your student population, maybe compared to some of the other universities that are part of the University Sales Center Alliance, might be more diverse. Give us a perspective on the school and why that might be. 

Brad Anderson: Cal State Fullerton is relatively new compared to a lot of colleges. We didn’t start until 1957. That’s when it started. It basically is a state school. The Cal State system works as a university, then the Cal State University, and then Cal State colleges. It has a three-tiered program. We’re in the middle of that. We’re one of the largest business colleges on the West Coast. We have 40,000 students in the university. Of that, over 27% of it is with our business college, which is where I report. 

We basically do have a lot of first-generation undergraduates. In fact, about 40% are first-generation, their parents have never gone to college, but they push them. As far as undergraduates, we have almost 10,000 of that. About 4,000 are transfer students. We have a lot of transfers as well as a lot of first-generation. This makes us a little unique because California is basically flooded with universities. We have probably 16 or 17 universities in the LA Orange County area. High competition, everything from private universities like Chapman, University of Redlands, to the colleges like Irvine, which is in the UC system, Cal State like us, then Cal State Los Angeles is also nearby. 

With our college, we actually have 13 centers of excellence, which basically the Sales Leadership Center is one of those 13. We have things like women’s leadership, regular leadership management, things like that, entrepreneurial. Then we were also very big and worldwide-known for accounting. 

Fred Diamond: I feel a little bit of affinity because I got my master’s in business at San Jose State University. I was very, very proud of that way back in the day. You mentioned that California is a hub for a lot of universities. There’s a lot of them. There are great ones, a lot of great community type colleges, but you’re one of only two University Sales Center Alliance recognized programs in California. Why do you think there are so few professional selling programs out West? 

Brad Anderson: I don’t really understand it other than I think a lot of the people that started the USCA, which is a great program. We love it. I’ve learned a lot from them. They helped me onboard when I came here. But I think because a lot of them started more in the Midwest and East, that they’ve concentrated more there. You’re right, it’s us and Chico State here in California. I do know that San Diego State is looking at trying to create a program, but there are a lot of requirements. That’s why the USCA is very good at accrediting, very similar to like Western States or anything else. There are a lot of requirements and I think that’s what protrudes them, is you have to have a center, you have to have a budget, you have to have dedicated personnel. Then you have to have the right academic and integration of nonacademic skill sets. 

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about your curriculum. Tell us about some of the classes. Do you offer a degree, either a major, minor, or certificate? What are some of the trends that are shaping this curriculum? 

Brad Anderson: We do not offer a major, we offer a minor in sales. Since most of our students in the business college are marketing majors, and it would be duplication, they cannot get a sales minor and a marketing major. Instead, we have the certificate, which is also accredited by the USCA. We offer the credentials for the certificate. They have to take three classes. If they take the minor, it’s five classes. It’s all set so that we do augmentation beyond just what’s in the classroom. In our classrooms, we have a sales class, we have a sales management class, so specific to sales, we have consumer products, we have negotiations, and then we have ISDS, which is more info systems. 

Fred Diamond: Tells us a little bit about how your program fits in with the rest of the universities. One of our big friends at the Institute likes to say that even as late as 1980, in the US census, if you were in sales, you had to check the box, it said peddler. One of the interesting things that have happened with our Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged is a lot of people have been surprised that there are programs that teach professional selling. Yet the irony, I think, is I’ve worked for some of the best technology companies in the world, and some of those important employees are the sales professionals, and it’s a science. There’s so much to it. It’s not just like a nice handshake anymore, or even relationships, especially with technology and AI. Especially when you’re selling complex technology, it really is a thoughtful endeavor, we believe. Obviously, everyone listening to the show probably believes that as well. Give us some insights into how your program is fitting into the rest of the university. 

Brad Anderson: Part of it is because we have a diverse background of students as well, or ethnicities. We’re high Asian, high Hispanic, low Caucasian, low everything else. We cater to that. The school, basically, we just funnel the same type. What helps us here is a lot of people don’t understand that sales is part of everybody’s life. In fact, one of the exercises I do my first day of sales class is have a little role play where I get two students to come up and they just read my role play. It’s basically them, they were going to go to lunch, so they know they have a need. They already know each other. They don’t have to be prospecting. But now, they start negotiating about, do they want Del Taco or McDonald’s, In-N-Out Burger, and how and why. It takes about two minutes and then they see how this is really how everybody goes through their life. 

How we fit with the university is the mission statement for our college and university is to be nationally recognized and also service all of these different ethnic backgrounds. We do exactly that by providing them all of the skill sets and the soft skills that go with the academics they get in the classroom. Then we also reach out to developing those programs that help them develop those skills. We do sales competitions. We do role plays. We are starting to use some AI with some of the role plays as well, which is becoming very interesting. We have a lot of the students that when they have experiential learning to go with the academic learning, it makes them a better product for the companies that then want to hire them. 

Fred Diamond: With your student mix, what do they want to learn? You’re saying a lot of them probably are getting newly exposed to what professional selling is and the science behind it, and how you need to interact with the customer. There’s a lot of thought that needs to go into a complex sale. What are some of the things that they’re excited to learn about? What do they want to learn about? 

Brad Anderson: The first thing they want to learn is why should they even be in sales? We take them through the fact that it’s just part of your life and that B2B sales, which is the bulk of what we prepare them for, is not the same as B2C sales. Most of their experience is about B2C. They go and buy something. That’s their experience, which is why sales has a bad rep. But the bulk of the business is done B2B. We start showing them how you start using the methodology to sell the process, you do the information, you have to do research, and there’s a lot of academics, a lot of research that goes behind building a science for making a sale. 

They want to learn how to do that. What’s that process? How do I get successful at that? How do I get the skills so that I’m going to be better than someone else at doing that? That’s where some of our sales competitions, our role plays, the academics, all of that fits together because we help them build those soft skills that then help our sponsors when they hire them. The onboarding is much faster. The training, because they’re coachable, they’re ready, is much easier. Their training programs are much more effective and they’re more productive faster. 

Fred Diamond: One thing that we’ve learned from a lot of the companies that do sponsor programs similar to yours is the fact that the students that they’re hiring are so well prepared that they’re three years down the road. It’s not like they’re hiring a young adult right out of college who needs to understand. The ones who are coming from programs at the USCA, and yours at Cal State Fullerton, these young adults, they’re three years down the road. They know a lot of the things, however, they need to be trained on the product and the market and the nuance of what they sell. 

One of the cool things for me that I really enjoyed is seeing how much the students who are going through programs like yours are enthusiastic about the professional selling process. They learn that it’s not the ridiculous, what do I got to do to get you to buy this pen type of a thing, or what people might think about selling is. B2B sales, you’re selling for some of the best companies in the world. You have to have shown that you have earned the right to be a sales professional at companies like these. 

Talk about some of the corporate sponsorships. Tell us about your relationships. What do they know? What do they expect? What would you tell a business that may not know about this, but has learned about it and would like to get involved? 

Brad Anderson: One of the things with our sponsors, like you were saying with onboarding, we have success stories from our students. Our platinum sponsors, Enterprise Mobility, which is the car rental company, they get many of our students every year. They have a two-year training program to get into management. A lot of our students basically go through that in about 14 to 15 months instead of the 24 months. Some of them have gone a lot faster. Daikin, which is another one of our sponsors, has a student right now that has gone through their management training program in two years and he’s already running full divisions. They get far ahead and that’s what our sponsors like. They like the fact that we prepare them for coachability, for soft skills, for getting ready to make good presentations, and how to get the information so that their training programs are more effective, their management training programs are then faster and better. 

CED have a very good program for training their management development people. Maybe they’re very strict on who they hire and they only hire a couple each year, but then they hire some of our students just to be regular employees and can still make some of the same head roads into management. Yes, our sponsors look for the soft skills. They come to our competitions as our judges to actually see the students in action and watching them do a role play, which is a real role play. 

We’re coming up on a sales presentation right now with a competition on April 10th where Enterprise will do the role play and they’re going to use their fleet management, so it’s B2B. The students will be selling the fleet management services to other companies. But then we have many of our sponsors like Samsara, they’re in technology. Like you mentioned, technology is something where a lot of the technologists are very good at programming things like that, but then they don’t have good people skills to go sell their own good products. Samsara has an excellent culture behind their company. 

We’ve got all kinds of companies, and we thank our sponsors because we need them to basically come and sponsor us so we can host these events to help the students. But then as much as we want their money, we also want their participation. Because if they’re not on campus with the students, the students aren’t going to know the connections, they’re not going to network. Some of these companies, I just mentioned CED and Samsara, the students don’t even know who that is. Enterprise, they understand. Gallo, they understand. Kellogg’s, they understand, because those are all companies that are consumer products. But when you start talking about these background Ryerson, Patterson Dental, or Amcor, students have no idea who these people are. We’ve got UKG does a great job of putting together programs for internships. 

Anything we can do to help them get students in front of them so that they can then recruit them and hire them, that’s what they’re looking for. They do look for ROI, because I deal mostly with recruiters, but they’re looking for those soft skills, they’re looking for networking, and they’re looking for students that are hungry to win. 

Fred Diamond: The students, a lot of them, they get educated as they matriculate. Then they learn about the offerings that are there and they learn more about what type of job potential they can get from something like this. Tell us about some of the expectations that your students have. How much of them will go into sales, the ones with the minors, and how many will be in professional selling? I know your program is relatively new, but how long will they be in? Will they be in sales leadership and management for their entire careers? Is that what they’re expecting to move into from this? 

Brad Anderson: That’s a great question. Actually, no, they don’t expect to always be in sales. Some of them do stay in sales. I stayed in sales in the sales department most of my career. But no, they don’t expect necessarily that, but they’re open to that that could happen. Some of them, like the one I mentioned with Daikin, he’s been there since 2021. He’s already in second level management and he did not think he would be selling more than a couple of years. Now he’s in sales management, loves it, wants to stay in that for his whole career. He even got his MBA so that he could actually be more participatory in management and strategy in the management department. 

They want careers, they want good jobs, and so we offer that. I do vet our sponsors as well. As much as they vet us, I vet them to make sure that they have good training programs, that they have longevity, that they offer development. The students look for that. They want to know that they can grow. They want to know that there’s good training programs. I mentioned Enterprise, they have one of the best training programs in the country for any entry level sales person. But they also look for growth and solid competitive benefits. They’re not always looking for the highest salary, and we actually try to guide them to looking at total benefit packages, not just income. 

Fred Diamond: Congratulations on the success of your program. Like I said, one of only two USCA-recognized programs in the State of California. I did a similar interview with a guy named Plamen Peev who runs the program at Towson State, which is in Maryland, just to the east of Baltimore, similar type of a thing. A lot of his students are first generation. They don’t know that B2B and complex selling exists. They work with a lot of great sponsors who are looking for hardworking, who have grit, who want to prove things. They’re the first generation in college, so they want to take their careers to the next level, and they have that support. It sounds like some similarities there. I applaud you for the great work that you’re doing for them. 

Give us a final action step. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas, but give us something specific that you would recommend sales professionals do to take their sales career to the next level. For someone listening to the show, for a student, what would you give them for advice? What would be your one thing you would tell them to do? 

Brad Anderson: You need to continually learn, because our environment in business is changing radically every day. Everything from AI to data. Big data is a big problem. At Nestlé, that was one of the reasons we were ahead of the AI curve and doing automated presentations. You’ve got to be coachable, you’ve got to have grit, you’ve got to be willing to continue to learn and grow as everything evolves. I don’t think AI is going to replace sales. It will change how we sell. It will change how we get some of the research done. It will change how we interact. But there is always going to be a need for people to be selling one to one, because AI can’t tell you what it doesn’t know. It picks up from what’s the past, what’s existing. It doesn’t try to go to the creative and it can’t, at this point in time anyway. 

I would say definitely reach out. If you’re going to be a good sales professional, you’re going to need to learn more. You’re going to need to adapt. You’re going to continue to network. Network with people beyond just where you are. Find mentors, things like that. For companies that come to us, we want your money because that’s how we stay in business to do and produce things, but we want your participation as well because the only way you’re going to get our students is to interact with them. 

Fred Diamond: Once again, I want to thank Brad Anderson with Cal State Fullerton. Congratulations on your success and for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 843: Why Collegiate Professional Selling Programs Matter More Than Ever with Brad Anderson first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is an Office Hours: Sales Professors Unplugged sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Find Plamen on LinkedIn. 

PLAMEN’S TIP: “If you’re in a sales role and you have trouble justifying the value of what you’re selling, it’s probably time to look for another job, because long term, that’s not going to work.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: We’re talking today with Plamen Peev with Towson University, not too far from me. As a lot of our listeners know, I’m based in Northern Virginia, technically Fairfax, Virginia, on the west side of the DC Beltway. You’re located on the complete other side of the Beltway further north from us. What’s interesting is a number of people who’ve been on the podcast before have reached out to me. As a matter of fact, it was our good friend, the great Kevin Carr, who introduced us originally, Kevin with Cvent. I think he was episode number nine on my podcast back in 2017 when we were first kicking off. He saw what we were doing with our program with universities and said he’s very active at Towson and he introduced us. I’m excited to talk to you about what we’re going to be talking about. 

First, give us an introduction. We’ve got a bunch of questions I want to get to. Let us know about you. How did you get to this role at Towson, and whatever else you want to tell us? Then we got a bunch of great questions to ask you. 

Plamen Peev: Thank you, Fred, for having me. Kevin Carr, he’s a Towson University graduate. He’s on my advisory board for the newly created Sales Center at Towson University. It was sometime last year when he made me aware of the podcast and I’ve been following it and it’s very exciting to finally be able to talk to you on the podcast. Appreciate your invitation. 

I came to Towson University from the University of Georgia in 2011, when at the time, there wasn’t really anything related to sales education that was going on here. As a matter of fact, this is what probably got me the job, nobody wanted to teach sales, and they had a sales class as part of the marketing major. We started really, really small with a really small-scale sales competition. Probably this was 2015, 2016. I think it’s our 10th year actually in organizing that. The judges were mostly personal contacts, family and friends of other faculty members. 

A couple of years later, we introduced sponsorship opportunities because we felt that there are a lot of companies in the area that hire our graduates for sales roles, and we saw a lot of excitement among the business community. Sales people get excited about stuff like this really, really easy. As soon as I reached out to people and said, “Hey, we’re doing this thing at Towson University.” First of all, I have been recruiting here for 10 years and I’ve never spoken to a sales professor before. I was like, “Well, that’s pretty easy because there was none.” There weren’t any sales professors per se. 

Since then, we’ve used that momentum. Now we do two sales competitions per academic year. We usually have between 60 and 70 students in each. We are ready to launch a sales certificate. Maybe I’ll talk a little bit about it later in the podcast. 

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about that now. I know you have a new certification. Give us a little bit of an insight to that. 

Plamen Peev: The sales certificate will be something that students are going to be getting recognized on their diploma. Don’t ask me why it’s not a sales minor. It has to do with the way the University System of Maryland operates and it’s a little bit of a political issue, a little bit of a procedural issue in terms of what the approval process is within the University System of Maryland. I’m not going to get into details about that. But we have the certification, which we currently have two classes. One is an intro level professional selling class. The other one is an advanced selling class, which is an elective. We’re going to add to these classes two newly created classes, which are sales leadership, and then we have one that I’m very excited about, the sales innovation and technology class. 

These four classes, along with students participating in the sales club that we’ve created during the last year, and the sales competitions, that’s going to constitute the certification. We just went through voting on the approval at the university level. I’m fully expecting the certificate to be launched with probably 10 to 15 students in the fall, with the expectation to grow this exponentially in the next few years. 

Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s interview at the end of March of 2026. When you and I were doing the prep talk for this, you talked about the unique profile of the Towson student. It’s a diverse student population. You were telling me a lot of students are first-generation college students. Give us a little bit of a peek into that and how that is relevant to the sales program that you’re creating. 

Plamen Peev: Again, coming from the University of Georgia, which is another big flagship public university, although in a different state, I was probably not quite ready. It was a little unexpected, the profile of the population at Towson University, which I knew was also a large public university, but it’s very different in demographics from the University of Maryland, College Park. 

Once I got here, I found out that a lot of our students actually have full-time jobs in addition to taking classes. I would probably unofficially put that number at about 50% of the population and probably even more of them have part-time jobs. There was a definite difference in just the amount of grit that those Towson students had compared to what I’ve seen at the University of Georgia. Then I started hearing from employers, they really appreciate the grit of the Towson University graduates, and I saw that theme. I’m like, “This is stuff that’s actually very applicable to the sales profession as well.” I think we have that going for us for sure. 

Fred Diamond: That’s interesting. Grit is a word that we used to use all the time on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. One thing we do at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling is we do events for selling professionals. We’ve actually done sessions just on grit. I can see a young adult with a full-time job and the commitment to go to college to take their lives and their career to the next level definitely is overcoming challenges and trying to figure out how to balance things, and I hate to use the word sacrifice, but to make prioritization of things. That’s pretty good. 

You mentioned to me that you also teach a class on business etiquette. Why is that? 

Plamen Peev: I feel like we benefit from a very, I don’t want to say necessarily blue-collar student population, but definitely the socioeconomic background of our students is different from the big private universities in the area, or the flagship public universities. A lot of these students are first-generation students within their families. I had a couple of conversations with students that came to me and came to my colleagues and said, “Look, I’m going through this interview process for this company and the third round of the interview is supposed to be a formal dinner. I’m freaking out a little bit because presented with all these options in terms of forks and spoons, I don’t actually know exactly how everything works here.” When you start hearing stuff like this on a consistent basis, you figure out, “Maybe we need to have an etiquette dinner.” 

The marketing club decided that that we’re going to have this workshop dinner once a semester. We found a company in Towson that specializes in exactly that kind of education. We had Towson’s own Black & Gold Catering to do a six or seven course menu. As we go through the menu, the company we hired explains the importance of what’s happening during dinner, everything that goes along with it, the small talk and all the other exciting stuff. It’s eye-opening very often for us as well. We definitely have a few things to learn, but for the students that participate in that, I think it’s an amazing experience. Even if nothing else, it gives them the confidence to handle situations like that. 

Fred Diamond: A lot of what we talk about at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling is how you communicate, and not to your peers. In a lot of cases, the selling professionals or the young adults who are coming out with these degrees, because of their knowledge of the sales process and what they’re being taught, they’re getting access to people that are, career-wise, above them, maybe a couple of notches above and they’re used to a certain type of interaction and communication. I’m thrilled that you’re doing that and showing them various ways of how to communicate effectively and how to present yourself, especially as they’re given this opportunity with this education to now provide value to the company. 

You were telling me that almost anyone who’s enrolled at the university can take your classes, not just the sales team. Obviously, you don’t have a major or a minor, so there’s no students who are just in that path, so to speak. Is that happening, are students from all over the university finding out about your classes and then taking them? 

Plamen Peev: We still have to do some missionary work in terms of getting the word out. But I can see more and more students becoming aware of the fact that there’s just a lot of opportunities in the sales profession. We teach our classes from a business-to-business perspective. That would involve a lot of industries where the salespeople have to have a little bit of knowledge of, say, chemistry or biology or some of the fields that are associated to engineering. It’s not necessarily limited to the business students. 

There are a lot of manufacturers out there who are really looking for this perfect and very rare profile of somebody with the technical education background, but also knowledge of the sales process and understanding of the importance of asking the right questions and understanding the needs of the buyer, so you can actually solve the problems that the buyer is facing on a day-to-day basis. I think that’s not necessarily unique for business students. I think they were probably the first to become more aware of the fact that this is where a lot of the jobs are. Even if your job is not necessarily a sales role per se, you can apply a lot of those skills every day at work. 

We’re going to expand. We’ve made some changes when it comes to our sales classes, since they required a marketing class as a prerequisite. Now, we’re going to open that up and make these classes accessible to all students in all majors. We’ve historically had a lot of mass communication students who minor in marketing, a lot of sports management majors who minor in marketing. These are majors outside of the business school. I had one year when a nursing student won second place in the sales competition. We went to the Kennesaw State competition and the companies were very interested in him because he was probably the only student out of 150 contestants with that specific profile. Also, I’m in talks with the dean of the Fisher College of Science at Towson University and he’s very open to really advertising this new certificate program to the science students as well, which I think is where we’re going to find a lot of traction. 

Fred Diamond: A lot of the leaders that we interview for the Sales Game Changers Podcast and that are part of our Institute for Effective Professional Selling, maybe they came from chemistry, or they came from other sciences. One of the two things we always say is, to be successful in professional selling, you need to intimately understand your customer’s marketplace and what they do and why they do it and for whom, or you need to really, really understand what you’re selling better than anybody and how it fits in in the ecosystem with other products and other solutions, if you will. Coming out with a degree in chemistry or biology or other sides, medical, that’ll definitely give you a heads up. 

Just curiously, these students, what do they want to know? Obviously, they might have heard, “If I can get a job in sales, it pays more money, better career,” all those kinds of things. What do they want to learn from you and your organization? 

Plamen Peev: In the intro professional selling class, there are a couple of moments during that first semester when I can see students change their mindset in terms of how they approach thinking about professional selling. One of those moments is when I tell them, “Look, if you end up in a sales role and you really have trouble justifying the money that people are paying for your product, in other words, you’re not believing really in your product, it’s probably time for you to look for another job, because long term, this is just not going to work for you.” 

When I drop sentences like this, or when we have these moments in the classroom, or telling them, “Hey, if there is no problem that I’m solving for you, I don’t really want you to buy anything from me, because what’s the point?” Creating customers that then have questions about their decisions to purchase a couple of months later, or a couple of weeks later, that’s not working well for anybody really. You see their eyes and they’re like, “Oh, okay,” so this may be different than the stereotypes that they had when they were walking in the classroom. I think they’re excited to explore sales in that sense. I think they’re eager to learn how to ask the right questions and how to listen well and how to probe for solutions. It’s this investigative work that I think is exciting for a lot of them to try to figure out an issue that maybe even the buyer is not fully aware of. I think that’s exciting for the students. 

Fred Diamond: It opens up a whole new way of thinking about sales. We view sales as a being of service. The companies that work with the Institute for Effective Professional Selling are some of the top companies in the world and their customers don’t buy things, especially now, we’re doing the interview in 2026, that they don’t need, that they don’t want. Not only will they not buy, they don’t even want to engage with sales organizations unless the selling professional is bringing value for where they need to get to, that they may not understand, or that they know they need to get to, and they just want true professional assistance. 

Speaking of that, you had mentioned before that there are some companies that are supporting your efforts. What do they expect from supporting your efforts, being corporate sponsors? What’s a message that you want to get across to those who may not see the value in being associated with a program such as yours at Towson State? 

Plamen Peev: There are companies that have been with us pretty much from the beginning. The enterprises of the world, Cintas, Northwestern Mutual Assurance, Williams, a lot of these big companies from different industries are doing this at a national scale. I think they’re not necessarily looking for a finished product, but they want to engage with students in order to see a little bit of potential. If they see that potential and then good basis in terms of interpersonal communication and coachability, I think is very important as well, we all know, they go for it. A lot of these companies are short in terms of the positions that they have open and their ability and needs to hire more salespeople. They’re excited that a university would invest in sales education, looking for a little bit of potential in those students. They see them as gems that may need polishing and whatnot. 

I think Towson University presents a little bit of a different profile. I’ve talked about grit, but also, I think that we are one of the few schools that probably reflect the population of the community in which we exist, in terms of the percentage of students that are minority students, Hispanic, African-American. We have a Greek community here, Italian community in Baltimore. Our classroom pretty much looks like any public space you would go to in the City of Baltimore, the Baltimore County, or the State of Maryland for that matter. I think that’s also something that they reach out to us with and say, “Hey, we may need a Hispanic speaker for this one role that we have open. Please keep us in mind and let me know if there is a student that maybe fits that profile.” I think that’s also something that companies are becoming more and more aware of, that they have to have people that look and sound in a way that fits the customer base that is being served. 

Fred Diamond: Just to remind people, Towson is basically around Baltimore, Maryland, not too far from there? 

Plamen Peev: Yes. We are right inside the Beltway, technically a couple of miles into Baltimore County, but very close to the City of Baltimore. It’s about 15, 20 minutes right from Downtown, from the Inner Harbor. 

Fred Diamond: Well, thanks for giving us the introduction to your program. Congratulations on your success with the new certification program coming out. It’s very exciting to see. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up that we didn’t get a chance to address briefly? 

Plamen Peev: Getting the word out is important for us at this point, especially now that we have some infrastructure in place in the sense of our officially-recognized sales center at the university. We are members of the University Sales Center Alliance, which is how we connected as well. We have the certificate launching in the fall, and also, we’re looking to have the blueprint for a new sales lab in the next business building, the building you see behind me. It really is the oldest building on campus and it’s very beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, we can really use a building with a little more modern space and arrangement. 

Fred Diamond: I did a show recently with a guy named Frank Hauck who built the Sales Performance Lab at Bryant University. Feel free to reach out to him or Dr. Boyer over at Bryant on some of their ideas. 

Plamen Peev: Yeah, I talked to Stefanie actually at our last meeting at the USCA in Dallas. You were there as well. 

Fred Diamond: Go listen to the show that we did with Frank, a Bryant grad who supported that. Plamen Peev, thank you so much for all the great insights. Give us one specific action step that people listening to the Sales Game Changers Podcast today should implement right now to take their sales or sales leadership career to the next level. 

Plamen Peev: We’re really hoping that our sales certificate actually is going to grow to serve the community of some lifelong learners as well. We see that as a dual-purpose program, which is going to serve traditional students at Towson University, but also we’re hoping to be able to offer specific classes and workshops on a piecemeal basis for anybody who’s got their degree in say healthcare or engineering, but then coming back at a certain later point in their career wanting to get more training on the sales side of things, which is very often what people switch to at some point their careers. We’re really hoping to be able to serve that population as well in the future, so something to look out for. 

Fred Diamond: Once again, I want to thank Plamen Peev for being on today’s Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. Thank you so much. My name is Fred Diamond. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

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THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Dr. Howard Dover, I’m very excited to have you on the show. We’re going to be talking about something very exciting that has emerged from what our good friend Nancy Nardin had created and how she gifted all her Sales Landscape files to the University of Texas in Dallas and what’s happened since then, what you’ve done. But before we get started with that, give us a little bit of a background on yourself. Let our audience know who you are and why we’re talking to you today. 

Howard Dover: I’ve been at the University of Texas at Dallas for 13 years. When I arrived, I formed the center here for professional sales. About five years before that, I graduated my PhD in quantitative methodologies at the University of Texas at Dallas, and headed out to your neck of the woods there in the Mid-Atlantic region for my first job at Salisbury University, planning to be a quantitative researcher that taught classes at Salisbury University. Then the great recession hit and changed my whole life. 

As I began to realize that there’s what we teach and what industry needs and there was a gap, I really probably unhealthily so I have not wanted that gap to exist the rest of my life. I constantly am out there trying to understand where is the puck moving, in the hockey vernacular, and trying to figure out how to skate to the puck and get my students ready for two to three years out, if at all possible, which is a bit bold. Sometimes we miss, but most of the time we’re talking with great partners who lead us along the way of where the puck’s going. 

Fred Diamond: Actually, I was down on your campus for a USDA meeting in 2025. I got to speak to some of your students who’ve graduated and have moved on. I got to spend a little bit of time down at the center and it’s great. I love the work that you’re doing. I’m excited about what we’re going to be talking about today. Nancy Nardin, who is a friend of ours, she had created some amazing research into martech and sales tech companies and had actually even helped us out at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling with identifying some of the best companies in that space that we might want to talk to at the IEPS to sponsor some of our programs. 

I know she had retired a couple years ago, lost a little bit of track. I saw an announcement that you had made that she had gifted her Sales Landscape files to the University of Texas, Dallas. You’ve done some amazing stuff, which we’re going to be talking about. I’m just curious, how did that whole process come down? Why did you accept this gift? 

Howard Dover: I have to go a little bit back. If you follow the history of Nancy’s landscape, Sales Benchmark Index purchased Nancy Nardin’s company, and it became the SBI Sales Landscape for a few years, and Nancy worked for SBI. Then there came a period in which I assume the initial contract was over. We had conversations with SBI and we had conversations with Nancy at that moment to say, “Hey, maybe that’s something we might want to do.” It was a round-robin discussion. It took about a year and it came down to Nancy saying, “Well, why don’t you just take it over?” I have huge respect for Nancy. By the way, Nicholas 3K does similar work. I always want to let people know that G2 does this work and Gartner does this work, IDC does this work. 

What I see the value of the landscape is the digital artifact that shows the growth and the magnitude of the sales platforms that exist in our space. To me, that’s the contribution. Nancy did a lot of other things to support her business, but the real product of her work was that landscape. I use that all over the world in keynotes and academic presentations, and it was a barometer. Every time I would use it, I’d I put it up on the screen, I usually use Nancy’s because I know Nancy, and I’d say, “How many of you have seen this?” It would be a barometer no matter where I was presenting anywhere in the world, academic or industry, because if not enough people raise their hand, I knew I had to slow down. I had to talk about context and technology impact and how it’s moving. 

If more than 30%, 40%, 50% of the people would raise their hand, then I could go forward. I could say, “All right. Well, let’s talk about the trend lines in this.” I found the work that Nancy did so invaluable to me. I had to go talk to the dean and say, “Hey, good news and bad news, we have the opportunity to receive a digital artifact and files and take over a project.” I said, “The good news is that we could do this. The bad news is that it takes work to do this.” I said, “We’d have to allocate some students every semester throughout the year to do the work that Nancy’s team used to do. Then we’ll publish this twice a year,” is our goal at the moment. We’d love to get to quarterly, but I think it’s going to be twice a year. 

Kudos to Hasan, Hasan Pirkul is our Dean, he’s been our dean for over 25 years. He said, “So everybody in the world is going to have to come look at UTD’s website to figure out where the technology is being launched?” He said, “Yes, I want to do that.” We have two part time workers that work consistently throughout the year. We published the first version in January of this year. It was actually complete in October, but we’re a government entity, so it does take us a few more steps to be able to put it out there than a private entity, because we have lots of rules and regulations for the State of Texas, and other challenges within our internal website teams. We have hoops we get to go through that no one else has to go through. We were able to release it, but we’re already in the process of releasing. Now, the first release stayed true to Nancy’s categories. 

Fred Diamond: Before you go into that, I know it, so I jumped right in. A lot of our audience may not know exactly what the sales landscape is. Give us a description of generally what it is before we get into some of the details. 

Howard Dover: The last release included the posting of 4000 different logos and categorize those logos by the work and function that is being done. You have the top of funnel, the middle of funnel, and then the management structure. You’re then categorizing where do these logos fit in the work that’s being done by a sales organization. Once again, to me, the value of the landscape artifact, the digital artifact that gets published a couple of times a year now, is we get a snapshot in time to say, what does it look like right now? 

Our goal is not to do what G2 does, which is you can go into a category and find all the companies, or Gartner, and go in and figure out which ones are doing great, which ones are not doing great. We don’t do a magic quadrant. We’re just providing that categorization and geography presentation. It’s a landscape. It’s a visual display of all of the apps that exist in the sales space. 

Now, do we get them all? Probably not. You can send an email to us. We have a form on our website. If you feel we missed you, you can tell us. You can hand raise and we’ll look at your company and properly categorize you. That’s the goal and that’s the output. We also get to know a lot of data. Nancy didn’t always track the historic movements. For us, that’s actually the advantage of being academics, is we’re capturing moments in time. Then we know the growth and the decline of different segments. 

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about that specifically. You had posted something up on LinkedIn, and it intrigued me for the reasons that we described in the beginning of this. You had mentioned in your post that, and I think you might actually have some updates on this, you went from 800 companies originally down to 600. Then you added another 4,000. If you want to update those numbers, that’s great. Feel free to tell us now. Then why do you think this happened? Tell us a little bit more about those insights. 

Howard Dover: There’s always shift in in this space. This is the SAS vs SAS based companies for the most part. We’re seeing entrance and exits pretty consistently, acquisitions and bankruptcy. There’s a lot of movement. When you realize that when Nancy last published and SBI last published, it was three years ago. If you look three years back, we got it with 1,600, of which only 600 were alive. But then we added back in another 3,500, bringing us to 4,000 logos. That’s separate logo drops within the categories representing about 32,000 brands. But this is the interesting thing, Fred. 

We published that, our last snapshot was October, we took a new snapshot in February. We’re up 25% on logos, just four months in the categories. For example, this one is going to surprise you, AI sales assistants are up 20% for the year. If you want to look at another popping one is if we look at sales engagement, which is strange to me, that’s up 18%. Then one of the hot items right now is sales coaching, which is just under 20%, lots of movement in that sales coaching space. One that actually dropped is buyer intent providers is down 20%. 

Fred Diamond: Just curious, 4,000 some odd companies, how big is the biggest? I’m guessing the smallest is some guy in his basement somewhere. Is that the range? How big is the biggest company? 

Howard Dover: Once again, I want to define what we’re doing, what we’re not doing. We don’t necessarily look at that storyline, but you wouldn’t be surprised. Microsoft, Salesforce, these are the biggest. Then you got the small, some of them we don’t get visibility until we see it. I’m always constantly looking on LinkedIn and various other sources to say, “Hey, is it in our database? Do we have it?” and we begin tracking it. But we source the data through G2, and you can look at Crunchbase, and you can look at Gartner reports, and things like that. Those are our primary sources. 

Once again, the project isn’t so much finding that data. It’s recategorizing them into the landscape categories and then providing that visual display. It would seem that this is pretty straightforward, but Nancy had a team that did this. Now, they did other things. Can you imagine, Fred, being the one or two kids on our campus that this is what they’re doing? Is they’re going out and identifying each of these new entrants into the field, they’re looking at the acquisitions, who got acquired? Where did they go? We’ve had three students do it up till now. They end up walking out of here, just they’re the walking genius on sales technology. 

Fred Diamond: I think it’s gold for those students. One of the great things is, at the IEPS, we’ve gotten to know a lot of the universities that have selling programs. We’ve gotten to know either a major, minor, or certificate, or concentration. I’ve spoken to a lot of the students. One of the great things and one of the reasons why we’ve gotten behind the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged, as I mentioned before, we’re going to be giving out our first University Sales Educator of the Year award to Brian Collins from Virginia Tech. The community of students are so passionate about this world that we live in, the professional selling world. 

Not everyone’s going to make it hugely successful, but a lot of them will. A lot of them are very passionate about the technology, and they’re very passionate about the tools. I know you’re going to be hitting the road and sharing some of the insights at various places this spring. Give us some insights into what some of the things are you’re going to be presenting. 

Howard Dover: I think one of the things, we talked about some of the trend line pieces. Some of the areas that are new, some of the new areas that are just brand-new categories, digital sales rooms, demo automation software, super minds, this area of super minds and this idea that we have an AI avatar that really operates as an AE, maybe even an SDR, of course, the massive growth area of AI sales assistance. The challenge with the category of AI sales assistance is the fact that it’s probably too big of a category. It’s a big category. That’s going to be part of the work moving forward, is updating the categories from three years ago. 

We’ve already completed iteration one of that project. Now we’re in the building phase of the next landscape. It’ll be a two-phase process where we’ll take our existing perfect mapping and we’ll probably do an intermediate update, and then probably late summer, we’ll be able to add the new categorization where we don’t have perfect mapping, because that work takes a lot longer to say, “Here’s brand new areas,” because with new technology comes new motion, comes new skill. 

Some of it is old skill that just needs to be tweaked a little bit. I like the word motion because I don’t think skill changes dramatically. I think the motion changes. For example, when we look at the recent gold medal performance of the American skater, Miss Liu, her skills were the equivalent of many of her peers. The skills that she had to deploy, the necessary elements of her skating routine were the same, and the skills required to do those are pretty consistently defined. But the motions that she did were different and elevated. 

My friend Juliana Stancampiano from Oxygen Exp was the person who brought that into the Sales Enablement Society, like, “I love the word motion.” The idea of we have skill and then we have motion, and motion is the way we execute the skill. That can be varied and nuanced and the nuance creates exponential performance if we understand the differences. 

Fred Diamond: I understand that you also created a course at University of Texas Dallas called AI Within the Sales Technology Landscape, which was based on some of the data that you captured. First of all, is that true? Second of all, if it is, what do you teach in the class? What’s the value? What’s a student going to get if they come through that class? 

Howard Dover: Let me go a little deeper, if I can. Gartner put out a research item in January of 2025, saying that, I thought it was 70 plus percent of all CROs needed or wanted to hire a generative AI sales specialist in 2025. The first question I had is, what is a generative AI sales specialist? It doesn’t matter, when given that title, over 70% of CROs said they needed to hire one. We looked at that and the University of Texas at Dallas was formed by TI and they gave the land to the state and said, “We want you to be a relevant university. If you stay a relevant university, we’ll keep funding you for everything you need.” We’ve been moving to market since our founding in 1969. 

To me when I saw that, I said, “Well, then we’re going to create a certificate in AI for sales.” We already had two courses that were very AI heavy, and my dean insisted we create an AI for sales class, and we own the landscapes. We know the data. We simply took Gartner’s action-oriented design, as from their keynote from last year’s CSO Summit, and said, “Let’s move into the landscape and get our students to be thinking around action orientation to build agentic concepts and test the agentic concepts of the landscape, including risk of replacement by low-code, no-code solutions.” It was a very early class and we all said, “Hey, nobody knows how to teach this. We’re going to learn together.” 

We took aspects of the landscape. Each team took a piece of the landscape and found a product, described the product, then using action-oriented design thinking, they determined what actions were being done by the software, of those actions, which of them could be replaced with LLMs and which could be replaced with agentic using low-code, no-code solutions. That was the whole class. 

Fred Diamond: We also had one of your professors, Semira Amirpour, on the Office Hours Sales Game Changers Podcast. I encourage people who are listening to this to go listen to her show. She went into a little more detail about the relationship with TI and how the university was created, etc. 

I’m going to ask you, what’s the benefit of all this to selling organizations? But before I do, I’m just curious, you’re an academic, but you’re also in the professional sales world. What were some of your ahas? Once you took over this project and once you started leading the people who were doing the research and the updating, what were the one or two things that were, “Ah, gee, I didn’t realize that.” I’m just curious, if you can think of anything. 

Howard Dover: You know Terry Loe. Terry Loe helped me out almost a decade and a half ago when I was getting into this, but my aha moment came when I came to Dallas. I think it was one of the sales summits put on by Tim Clark when he was back at Salesforce, and he created these sales summits inside of Dreamforce. Even LinkedIn had their national event in New York. It was the two of them. I attended both of them that year. I heard these people talking about exponential performance. The technology was enabling. 

I remember distinctly a presentation from a guy, Brian, I’m forgetting his last name, from Microsoft. He presented in Vegas at LinkedIn. He’s showing that people who socially sell are 2x, 4x, and 7x performance. I went up to him after the thing and I said, “What?” Because here I’m teaching, I’m just teaching stuff, which I think is a fair thing to say, when I was teaching back then it was stuff, and I looked at that and said, “I got to figure out what I should be teaching.” Because there’s exponential performance on the table. Lady at IBM was showing that she had a 3x performance differential when she did a project. 

I started realizing that technology properly deployed with proper skill and motion creates exponential performance. This has become my thrust for probably a decade. I wrote a book called the Sales Innovation Paradox saying, “With all the technology, why haven’t we experienced more exponential performance?” Instead, we hired more salespeople and had lower quota attainment. Makes no sense given the massive technology. That’s why I love the landscape, because to me, the landscape is that evidence of the explosion of technology and yet the reduction of performance. The waste that’s occurring, the lower efficacy that’s going on. Yet when you train people around skill, motion, and give them the proper resources, you don’t give them the proper resources without the training and the skill. You look at the skill, you look at the motion, you look at the difference in the way you are precise and relevant when you’re communicating, it lists everything. 

You get a student who’s in Mexico City just posted her first full year over at Salesforce in Mexico, one of our alumni. She’s 256% of her quota. I’m not surprised, Fred. We hear those numbers. My favorite one this last year was 1,000%. That’s that exponential performance. That’s where I say I’m skating to where the pucks headed. The game we’re playing is young people don’t know what they don’t know. We can train them to perform at peak levels. 

Fred Diamond: That is very, very cool. I’d love to learn more. I’ll ask you one final question. Is this a product now? Can selling organizations purchase this, or you’re just making this available to the world on the University of Texas Dallas’ website? 

Howard Dover: The landscape, it’s out on the UTD website. 

Fred Diamond: Is there anything to buy or is it just available? 

Howard Dover: If you go to the UTD Center for Professional Sales’ website, you can find the landscape. Then you can also find something called our pulse report, which would probably take another podcast actually, but we’re skating to where the pucks going to be. When you deploy AI technology, your problem is no longer skill. It’s attribution. What are the attributes the salesperson needs if the AI is going to increase the expectation, which it is and does? You got to increase the curiosity and the business acumen of the salesperson. We’ve been working on what we call the business acumen project for three years at UTD. 

Fred Diamond: I mentioned I had Semira Amirpour on the show. She went into detail about your program and what students get and the curriculum that you offer and the value to the various companies that may want to be corporate sponsors. Is there anything you want to get us updated on that’s happening at University of Texas Dallas that we should let the audience know? This is a huge thing, but is there anything else that you want to share before I ask you for your final action step? 

Howard Dover: I think this idea around the business acumen and the concepts of precision relevance. This idea that we live in a world where we can be extremely precise. We live in a world where we can be AI augmented to be extremely relevant for the moment that we are allowed to be precise. When we do that, we end up with exponential performance. This is something any company can do. To do that, you do need to make sure that your people have increased acumen and they need to be genuinely curious. That’s why we’ve been working on that project for a couple of years. Can we build it? We have an answer. The answer is yes. We’re trying to prove it very meticulously, which is hard to do, but we’re working on it. We think we’re there. 

Fred Diamond: That is amazing. Again, congratulations. When I saw your announcement, I mentioned in the early part of this podcast that we’re fond of Nancy and she was very kind to us at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. I was very excited to see the developments and I applaud you on what’s happened and what’s going to continue happening. 

Dr. Howard Dover, University of Texas Dallas, gives a final action step. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas along the way. For people listening to the show or reading the transcript, give us something specific that they should do right now to take their sales career to the next level. 

Howard Dover: Focus on skill before deploying technology. Work on effectiveness before efficiency. If you can focus at the individual, the org level, or the manager level at effectiveness, first, then you bring in efficiency, you’ll have exponential performance. 

Fred Diamond: I love how you’ve tied those together throughout the course of today’s podcast. Once again, this is the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. I want to thank Dr. Howard Dover for being on today’s show. My name is Fred Diamond. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

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LORENZO’S TIP: “When buyers make decisions, what matters most is not advantages versus disadvantages, but their perception of risk. Reducing uncertainty is what leads to the sale.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Dr. Bizzi, I’m very excited to have you on the show. You’re the author of what I thought was a great book, Myths vs. Science of Selling. You’re not necessarily a sales professor. A lot of the professors that I’ve been interviewing on the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged show are typically in the sales department, typically with universities that are part of the University Sales Center Alliance. You’re a strategy professor, but you wrote a book on the Myths vs. Science of Selling. It’s really, really good. It’s an interesting approach that you take where you talk about a common myth that people may have about sales. Then you go into why that myth might have perpetuated. Then you talk about what’s real in that particular space. Then you give advice on what selling professionals can be doing. It’s a very well-done book. 

You cover a lot of ground, and actually you tell a lot of great stories. You talk about some famous sales leaders from way back in the day, like the Zig Ziglars of the world. Kudos to you on the research and the content that you have in the book. I could tell as I was reading it, you’re very, very good at research and you put a lot of time and energy into thinking this thing through. Before I get into some of the details of the book, introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about you so that we can understand who you are and a little more background on what you do. 

Lorenzo Bizzi: It’s a pleasure for me to be here and to have the opportunity of having this conversation about work that I spent four years to develop this book and a lot of effort to try to make something impactful. As you correctly said, I’m a professor of strategy rather than a professor of sales. But as I’ve always taught MBA students, in our MBA program, we actually do real consulting work with local businesses. These are generally B2B businesses, and the majority of the times, the projects are about sales. That’s where I developed expertise on B2B sales. 

Most times I see very, very strong links between strategy and B2B sales. That would not apply to B2C for sure, but a lot of times, since you have to explain to the buyer how your product or your service is going to improve their business, this is very, very similar to strategy. In fact, a lot of the contents in my book overlap. There’s an overlap between strategy and sales. That’s why I developed an expertise and a strong interest in B2B sales specifically. The book does not really offer a lot of content and insight for B2C, but it’s particularly valuable for both B2B and B2G. I’ve been working four years on this book. I’ve been doing consulting and teaching for 13 years here in California, and this is where I got my idea to try to build my book. 

Fred Diamond: It’s a great point that you just made there. You start off a lot of the chapters talking about things like you need to be an extrovert to be successful in sales. On the Sales Game Changers Podcast, we’re all about B2B, and we have a lot of guests and listeners who are in the B2G, the business to government space. There’s a lot of nuance to it because of the customer regulations and things like that and how they go about buying. But the way that they make their decisions are very, very similar to B2B. There’s a lot that you need to know. You talk about things like, do you need to be in a relationship to get sales? You make really good points, which is it helps, but that’s not going to get you the sale. The way that the customer buys, the way that the customer discerns. 

Talk about that for a little bit. Talk about the concepts of popular advice. A lot of times people will say to someone, “You’ll be very good in sales because you’re a great talker.” Or, “You have a great personality,” and that’ll only get you so far. Talk about the big difference between popular advice and real hardcore research. 

Lorenzo Bizzi: The main premise of the book is that there is a gap between popular advice and what research shows. The reason is very simple. Nowadays, everybody has a voice and the space is extremely crowded. A lot of YouTube stars, a lot of influencers, a lot of social media people. Everybody has a voice, everybody talks, and it’s very difficult to get noticed if you want to say something about an advice for sales. The way in which people respond to this pressure is by exaggerating claims. How can I be heard if I just say something that is true? Sometimes truth is mild. The truth is not exaggerated, truth is not empathic, truth is not emotional. A lot of people tend to exaggerate claims then to say, “This is the one thing that is going to make you super rich.” The one secret, secret is a beautiful word, all the time we mention secret, “This is a secret nobody knows, but I’m going to tell you, and it’s going to make you instantly rich.” 

When I started reading a lot of sales books, it was feeling uncomfortable. This idea that we have to always exaggerate claims, and that’s not true. A lot of times, researchers with many, many years of work produced a lot of beautiful insights that sales professionals do not know. Here I got my motivation of trying to say, “Look, this is what the advice says, and this is what research says.” Most of the times the advice can actually be true, but the impact is enormously exaggerated. 

I just say, for example, goal settings, set ambitious sales goals. That is important. Setting ambitious goals helps performance, but just a bit. While, if you read books, it says it’s going to change your life. You can dream whatever you want to get, and you’re going to get it. This is unfortunate because it then creates false expectations. People, at first when they read the books, they’re super excited. But then after they get this illusion, and unfortunately, they leave sales. What I really hate about the profession is that turnover in B2B sales is enormous. I blame it to a lot of the articles and books that create false expectations, making people believe that success is instant, that they’re going to be able to implement this one secret and right after they’re going to be able to succeed. That is false, and it eventually creates disillusions, excitement at first, then disillusionment. 

Now, you mentioned, for example, the personality, how being an extrovert can help, how curating rapport in a sales relationship can be important. This is very important, but it’s not enough to bring the sale. I’m going to talk more about it. The way in which you build rapport, your personality, perhaps your extraversion, we can talk a little bit more about extraversion because it’s a very interesting construct, but your personality can influence the extent to which the buyer pays attention to what you say. Nobody pays attention to someone they don’t like. Everybody pays attention to someone they like, but paying attention is different from purchasing. 

I pay attention, I listen more to what you have to say. If the product is good, then I’m going to buy. But if the product is bad and I’m paying more attention to what you say, then I’m actually less likely to buy. There has to be both personality, both rapport, both paying attention to what the buyers are saying, combined with a very strong sales conversation focused on rationality and on explaining well the product or services that are likely to impact the business and eventually result in ROI. That is really what brings a sale. Your personality, your rapport can empower listening, but then that listening must be converted to a sale with a very powerful sales conversation. 

Fred Diamond: That is a great point. As I was reading the book, I was thinking a lot about the evolution of professional selling. My organization used to be known as the Institute for Excellence in Sales. In May of 2025, we changed the name to the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. We created our Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership. 

I remember, we have a good friend at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, his name is Tom Snyder. He runs a company called Funnel Clarity. He’s also written a couple books. When he speaks, he talks about how as late as 1980 on the census, if you were in sales, the only option you had was peddler. If you were in sales and on the census, you chose what business you do. The only one that was there was peddler. When you think of a peddler, you think of a guy in a monkey in a carnival type of a thing. 

Now, when we think about the B2B sales that we’re doing, it’s very hard for a couple reasons. One is, you’re selling something that first of all could be very expensive. Second of all, there’s very low risk from your customers. They need to make sure that they’re making the right decision. A lot of times, what your customers, in IT, operations, finance, supply chain logistics, those are usually pretty complex operations. It’s not like an enthusiastic call is going to get them to write a check for $50 million worth of AI software. It might take a year or two, three. Then you got to think about competition and cooperation and partnerships. As I’m reading your book, I’m thinking in my mind about sales professionals I’ve met over the years and how they have evolved and how right now for the sales professionals who are listening, and to be frank with you, Dr. Bizzi, for the sales professionals who are in their 30s, 40s, it’s a whole different world. There’s a lot more complexity. You need to know more about the customer and their business to be successful, or else the customer doesn’t really need to spend time with you. 

Lorenzo Bizzi: Yes, absolutely. Things have changed so much, complexity has increased, but the game is now more interesting. If there is more complexity, that means that intelligence, preparation, and research are more relevant to close the deal. Now sales has become a game in which you can really attract interesting people, motivated people, and intelligent people, because the sales conversation with buyers has become more complicated. 

In the past, people were underprepared. A lot of times the sales profession was not appealing. Now, really developing a strong conversation with buyers to understand and to explain how your product and service can get into their business, can reinforce their competitive advantage, can help them be protected against the attack of the competition. This is a beautiful conversation. Now this has made the job of a sales professional extremely rich. It’s essential to be able to break the problem down well. 

As I do consulting with businesses, I realize that B2B sales is very, very proximal to what a consultant does when they’re making recommendations for anything to improve in the company. You help the client break the problem down. You help understand the source of the problem. You provide strong evidence in support of your claim and hypothesis, and then you justify and explain well how your solution is likely to impact the profitability of the company. It’s exactly the same as a B2B sales professional. A B2B sales professional is like a consultant, not just merely in the sense of consultative selling, we all know about it, but in the idea of, “I help you break your problem down, we go inside your organization together so that you get more insight into what really could cause the problem.” This creates a beautiful connection. 

You’re not just someone there to try to sell, but as you help them better understand their own problems, then I can develop trust and I want to talk with you. I want to do business with you. This increase in the importance of expertise has made the game more complex, but at the same time, more interesting, and has made the professionals, B2B sales or B2G sales professionals, much more insightful, much more powerful, and much more able to give a wonderful career to individuals. 

Fred Diamond: I love the way you said that, you said it very, very well. The sales professionals that we see being valuable right now and successful are those that are truly bringing value to the customers on where the customer needs to go without being told. Without the customer saying, “How can you help me get here?” the sales professionals need to know where the customer’s going, or else they really don’t need to spend time with them. 

I remember, as late as 15 years ago, a sales professional was where the information was gotten. I remember being in two-day-long meetings where our sales reps would present vision, strategy, roadmaps, things like that. Now the customer can go to Claude or ChatGPT and type in what is Apple’s product strategy for the next five years and within 30 seconds, it’ll appear. 

You cover a lot of ground in the book, and you make a great point that there’s no one secret to success. I love the way we’re talking here, and this is why we changed our name to the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. Professional Selling. If you are a professional, what does a professional do? Give us some of your insights in having read the book. What are some of the things right now that selling professionals, B2B or B2G, must be doing to be successful? 

Lorenzo Bizzi: It’s a beautiful point that you say, Fred, the stress on the word professional, because it’s also important to notice that when you ask buyers what perceptions they have about salespeople, a lot of time professional is not the first thing that comes to mind. When you think about what people associate the sellers, the sellers a lot of times are not trusted individuals. They’re trying to manipulate you. You have a good idea that we need to transform salespeople into professionals. 

Now, there are a lot of advice. I’d like to maybe focus on one, one interesting piece of advice that I found insightful in the book, is the idea of listening to the customers. Everybody says you have to listen to the customers. This is no news. But when you look at the books, a lot of times the advice for listening is you repeat what they’re saying, you paraphrase what they’re saying, you nod. In other words, active listening forces you to think about how to respond when someone is talking, so you’re not really listening. When someone is talking in your mind, you already have the script and you’re selecting what answer you have to provide from a tree that was given to you in advance. You’re not really listening. Listening is not about responding, of course, it is about responding, but not only about responding, it’s about sensing. Sensing is about understanding what the others are doing. 

How do you empower your understanding? Attention is extremely difficult. When people talk to you, especially about complex businesses, being able to understand what they’re saying is very difficult. We retain only a fraction of what people are saying, and then when we repeat and we respond, the buyer says, “This person shows a very shallow understanding of my situation.” That’s where preparation upfront becomes important. The more we study, the more we are expert of the problem, it’s not just important because it helps you sell more, it helps you converse better, but because it helps sensing more. It’s less effortful if you’re an expert of the problem, of the company, of the industry to pay attention. This is where expertise and professionalism come into the equation. The more you know about the industry, the competitor, the company, and the problem, the less effort you have when you listen to what they say, and you are able to get, instead of 20%, 50%, 80% of what they’re saying. When you respond, you show that you’re actually smart and you’re someone you need to have a conversation with. 

Really listening is not about responding, nodding, paraphrasing, “Hmm, that’s very nice.” That’s what you read in books. Listening is about sensing and being better able to absorb the information that the others are saying. In order to do that, the only way is to develop expertise that will allow you to switch from remembering 20% of what they say to remembering 80% of what they say. 

Fred Diamond: That’s such a great point. In the early days of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, I used to do the interviews in-person and I would go to a VP of sales office. Then when the pandemic happened, obviously everything went over to Zoom, and the conversation shifted more to, “What do I do today?” Or, “What should I be doing now?” One of the questions that I would ask the sales leaders that I would interview, typically VPs of companies like Microsoft and Oracle and IBM, is what are you great at? People would always say, “I’m a great listener. 66%, I have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that order.” 

After getting that answer time and time again, I started saying, “Okay. Well, help my audience. How can they become better listeners?” They hit on some of the things that you talked about, preparation, becoming an expert, asking better questions, training yourself. I like the way you just said, most people, when they talk about listening, they’re basically listening for their opportunity to talk. In sales it’s the same thing. It’s like, “Oh, okay. Interesting. Okay. Oh, huh, interesting.” But I know I need to get to my three questions. It’s like, “Interesting. Well, it’s interesting you would say that because where do you see-” I love the way you said that. 

Talk about maybe the concept of reducing uncertainty in the sales process. I think that’s going to be very important, because a lot of people who are listening are sales leaders, and they manage people, and everybody has a quota and everybody has a number that they need to get to. We’re doing today’s interview in January of 2026 and for some reason, a lot of the companies that are members of the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, their fiscal year ends January 31st. A number of them have said to me today that they’re closing in. Talk about the concept of reducing uncertainty when sales leadership is striving for certainty. When are we going to close this deal? How much is it going to be for? Because I need to tell my boss, who needs to tell his boss, who needs to tell our CFO for reporting. 

Lorenzo Bizzi: This is a fascinating topic, and I believe one of the most important points that I discuss in the book. Whenever a buyer makes a purchase, you can actually break it down into a matrix with two variables. One is my judgment on the product, I like it, I don’t like it. The other one is the uncertainty or certainty of my judgment, I think I like it, versus, I’m sure I like it, or, I think I don’t like it, versus, I’m sure I don’t like it. You can imagine this matrix. Most of the classic advice focuses on changing the judgment and shifting it from, I don’t like this product, to, I like this product. I say in the book that the most important point is actually shifting the judgment from, I think I like it, or, I think I don’t like it, to, I’m sure. It’s really what matters the most to the sales, especially in a B2B or a B2G context. I’ll tell you why. 

Research shows that when buyers make decisions, what’s most important is paradoxically not advantages versus disadvantages, but is my fear, my perception of risk. We assess the risk. We want to feel safe. Making buyers feel safer is more important than explaining the advantages and convincing them the advantages are higher than the disadvantages. This is paradoxical, because we are always thinking, “Yeah, I got to put all the advantages, make clear all the disadvantages.” But you see, the advice of trying to shift from, I don’t like this product, to, I like this product, as a result makes sales professionals inflate the benefits and hide the disadvantages. 

This unfortunately creates more uncertainty because if the buyer is an expert, the buyer’s going to say, “Hey, what’s going on? I don’t trust anymore what you’re saying.” My perception of uncertainty increases, and I’m not going to like to buy. In the human brains, when it comes to purchases, it’s more important there’s a feeling of comfort and a feeling of safety. If you are able to reduce their perception of uncertainty in the process, you make it very clear, they feel comfortable, they feel comfort. This is way more important than convincing them the advantages are superior to the disadvantages, then they can gauge. This is important. We first responded to a situation of uncertainty with fear and distance. You need to make them closer to you, and you make them closer to you only by reducing their perceived uncertainty. 

Fred Diamond: I love the way you explained it. I’ve been saying for years that sales professionals need to put themselves in the shoes of the customer. Most customers in IT, or in operations, or logistics, or finance, they don’t want to lose their job. They want to hold onto their job. They don’t want to be the guy or lady who spent $50 million on a financial reporting system that was never implemented. They want security mostly in those positions that purchase B2B related things. They want to hold onto the job. The way you lose your job, besides obviously remote layoffs, etc., is by not making glaring errors. That’s such a great point. I used to sell ERP solutions 30 years ago, and everybody talked about the guy who brought in the $500 million SAP system that was never implemented, etc. 

It’s been great talking to you, Dr. Bizzi. The book is Myths vs. Science of Selling: When Research Reveals the Opposite of Common Belief. You go through a couple dozen areas like we discussed here, where you talk about the misconceptions, the myths, if you will, why they’re wrong, what’s factual, and then how selling professionals can utilize this to be more successful in their sales conversations and their process. 

I want to hit on one thing before I ask you for your final thought. A lot of salespeople want to be liked. You mentioned rapport before, but it doesn’t work anymore the way it used to. Customers, yes, they do want to like you, but they want to implement solutions that are going to help their company or organization achieve its goals this year or next year or two years from now, whatever it might be. Talk about that concept for a little bit, the whole idea of rapport. Yeah, it’s nice to have, but it’s not going to get you to your quota. 

Lorenzo Bizzi: Liking still matters, and I’m going to have to tell you, Fred, liking will matter even more in these times of AI, in which personal rapport becomes more important. Trust is going to be more difficult to acquire the stronger AI is, because every sales professional is going to be able to come up with the most beautiful stellar presentation. The buyer is not going to really believe those numbers. Anybody can show fantastic numbers, fantastic projections, beautiful stories. I don’t know how much that really comes from you or it comes from AI. Personal rapport and liking is still important and will become even more important. 

The mistake of sales professionals is to believe that liking is enough, and most importantly, that liking can replace a weak sales conversation. “Since they like me, the product doesn’t need to be that good anyway. They’re going to buy it.” That’s wrong. They interact. Liking. With a strong sales conversation, with a strong idea of why the product is good or better, leads to the sale. Liking is not a substitute for a poor conversation. That’s where people make most mistakes. “I’ll just focus on being liked. Then the sale is going to come.” No. Liking without a strong sales conversation leads to nothing. Liking combined with a strong, rational, powerful sales conversation that reduces uncertainty will lead to the sale. Liking still remains important, but like I said before, liking gives the attention, which is the precondition to be able to develop a conversation. But then again, still we need to focus on reducing the uncertainty, and that’s when the sale is going to happen. 

Fred Diamond: I love that you’re covering this because we’re over 800 Sales Game Changers Podcast episodes at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, events like our Women in Sales Leadership Forum, our Emerging Leaders Program, that is such an important message is, what’s the most important thing to the customer? At the end of the day, I’ve been saying this for years, it’s avoiding risk. How can you present this? 

We’re talking to Dr. Lorenzo Bizzi from California State University at Fullerton. Give us something specific. We’ve covered a lot of ground here, but something specific you recommend our listeners do right now after listening to the show, watching it on YouTube, or reading the transcript to take their sales career to the next level. 

Lorenzo Bizzi: This is a very beautiful question. The book itself has a lot of very specific actionable steps. The last part of each chapter, I have over 30 chapters, that goes into specific actions, how you can convert the conversation, transform it into a specific set of actions. There are a lot of little specific sets of actions, exactly what you have to say and what you have to do in this specific situation. But if I would say, what is the most important point of the book, is that I’m not this scholar or the professor that claims to go there, criticizes popular advice, science is right versus popular advice is wrong. That is not the goal. I always believe that if you tell people what to do, they won’t do it. But if you make them think about it, then they’re more likely to implement any recommendation. 

Yes, I have a lot of very little pieces of advice at the end of each chapter, but the key goal of the book is that each chapter creates a contrast. This is what popular advice says. This is what research says. I’m not going to be bold and say research is right. Popular advice is wrong. But by creating a contrast, you stimulate the mind of the readers. The whole goal of the book, although it provides a lot of little pieces of advice, is not actually to tell you what you have to do, but it’s to stimulate your thinking. If I give you contrasts, you’re forced to think and you’re forced to take your own position. Then after, when I provide the little piece of advice, you’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to do it,” or, “I’m not going to do it.” But if you only tell people do this, they’re not going to do it. Make people think, stimulate their minds, create contrasts. That, in my point of view, is the only way in which you’re going to make people do some of the actions that you recommend. 

Fred Diamond: I noticed in the book you talked about System 1 versus System 2 thinking, which is what you’re covering right now. I was very happy to see that because you’re absolutely right. It’s one thing we learned a long time ago, is that customers get more value in what they discover and what they decide to do versus what you tell them to do. Throughout your book, you’re talking about ways to get the customer to discover that type of thinking. 

Once again, Dr. Lorenzo Bizzi, California State University at Fullerton. Thank you so much for being on today’s Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. My name is Fred Diamond. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 827: Debunking Sales Myths So You Sell More Effectively with Lorenzo Bizzi first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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GREG’S TIP: “Your key to success in sales is to truly understand your customer’s business, even better than they do. That’s what separates you, because products are similar, but becoming a trusted resource is what makes you different.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Greg, on April 9th in Baton Rouge at the campus, is it on the campus of LSU, your event? 

Greg Accardo: That’s correct. Yeah, it will be at our Alumni Center here on campus. 

Fred Diamond: Very good. I got Greg Accardo, and the program is the LSU Sales Symposium. The agenda really caught my eye. You and I have talked a couple of times before. We’ve interviewed a lot of the directors of University Sales Center Alliance programs, so we’ve been wanting to get you on the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. But since you have the symposium coming up, I want to talk about what you’re going to be covering, why you’re doing the program. You have six world-class speakers, some from business, some from academia, and I’m excited, I want to get deep into what they’re talking about. But since this is an Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged show, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us about your journey to LSU. 

Greg Accardo: LSU is like a lot of other sales programs at other universities around the country. We’ve been around now for about 12 years. I was fortunate enough to be hired to be the first director of the program. Being an LSU alumni, that was a great honor, to be able to come in and take this startup from basically nothing and grow it and nurture it and made it my baby over the last 12 years. It’s been a nice ride and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute. 

LSU is an R1 state school here in Louisiana. Our College of Business is probably about 3,800 students. 900 of those students are declared marketing majors. We have about 200 of those students that are declared for the sales concentration. We also offer a concentration in digital marketing and also a concentration for marketing analytics. In addition to that, we also have a sales team that competes nationally and regionally across the country. In fact, we’re gearing up for a competition. Next week we’ll be leaving. The fun thing about the sales competition is I get to interact with all the great people you talk to all the time, the other sales faculty members from around the country. 

Fred Diamond: I’ve gone to a bunch of competitions all over the country. As listeners of the Office Hours Sales Game Changers Podcast know, we’re blown away by these young adults. We’re blown away at how talented they are. It’s funny, I tell people, Gartner is one of the big sponsors, and I went to a competition last year where the young adults were doing, it was a National Collegiate Sales Competition, and they were selling Gartner services. I’ve been a customer of Gartner in the past, and these young adults were better than any sales rep that I’ve ever been sold to by Gartner. 

The sales program, tell us a little bit about that. Tell us about some of the curriculum. Where do the young adults want to go after they graduate? What type of companies, how do you prepare them, etc.? 

Greg Accardo: Typically, I guess the best way to address that is a lot of the students who come here to pursue a degree in marketing in our college, I would say half are not really sure what they want to do. They’re at that point where they don’t know what they don’t know. Luckily for them, we feel like we offer them enough opportunities to fill in the gaps and figure out where they should be going, where their desires are, their tout, if they want to be regionally. Obviously, a lot of the big metro centers tend to be attractive. Students want to go to Dallas, they want to go to Austin, New Orleans, or maybe on the East Coast, Charlotte, New York City. But the thing that I’m proud of the most is that our students who come in and perform well in the program, I have yet to have a problem working with a student trying to find them a job. That takes care of itself. 

Once they come into the program and they absorb the material we give them, they take advantage of the opportunities. Those opportunities just happen between our corporate partners, our companies that are not our corporate partners. I think maybe some of that too is we really leverage our students hard to put a lot of effort in their LinkedIn profiles, because we’re preaching them all the time that your LinkedIn is your digital footprint. It is almost now more important than a paper resume. I don’t know of a single recruiter that’s out there recruiting salespeople that’s not going to go straight to your LinkedIn page, even if they got your paper resume. It’s almost like they have to go there to see, “Let me go see the details of this person. I want to see their picture, their branding image. I want to see the titles they’ve put in here, their experiences, maybe any videos they might have added.” We really push them hard to put some effort and some time into that LinkedIn profile, and that has paid off. I will admit. 

The other side of that is that we offer a lot of networking opportunities for our sales students. We do a Sales Career Expo, both spring semester and fall semester. Those are well attended by students. We gamify that event. We have a speed selling competition. We call it the Golden Ticket Championship. Students can get really competitive. There’s also an added incentive for all the sales students to complete a journey around all the companies that are at the Sales Career Expo. They can earn extra credit from some of their professors. We’ll offer them a little extra credit if they make that effort to go and do that elevator pitch to those companies, give them that resume, tell them a little bit about themselves, learn something about them. That’s paid off. I think that we’ve created the environment, we’ve created the tools, and we’ve put it all together and we just sit back and let it happen. 

Fred Diamond: I agree with you about LinkedIn. Since we started doing the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged, I must have gotten maybe 200, 300 outreach from selling students who were on LinkedIn who were reaching out. I see a lot of them. They all have the 500 connections that most of them should. I could see where they’re populating their LinkedIn to be oppressive, to be a good candidate with students. I agree with you too. One of the great things that I’ve learned since we’ve been doing the podcast is you’re preparing students to hit the ground running. Not just to hit the ground running, but to hit the ground running as if they’ve been working for three, four years. 

All the programs that I’ve worked at, the people I’ve met, associated with yours and other programs, these students, they understand the sales process. Now, they need to learn about the company and the markets and products, which takes a little bit of time, but a lot of the employers that we’ve been talking to said that these young adults are as if they’ve been working for three years, which helps with retention, which helps with management, and it helps with leadership. It’s great to talk to you and the various people around the country that we’ve spoken to. 

Now, on LinkedIn, I kept seeing these announcements about the LSU Sales Symposium, and it’s on April 9th, it’s in Baton Rouge, it’s on campus. Tell us a little bit about this program. Then I want to get into the details about your six speakers and why you picked them and what it’s going to be focusing on. Are you looking to have students or selling professionals from the Baton Rouge local industry? Who is it really for? 

Greg Accardo: First of all, let me give you a little bit of a history and how the event grew into what it is now. One of the classes that I teach is the capstone course in the sales program. In the capstone course, we’re pushing the students into a live sales project where they’re selling a real product to real people. We equip them with CRMs, some AI tools, and we put them in teams with a sales manager that they select, and we drive it like a company, and they have a quota they have to meet. 

We have a couple of events that are set up each semester for the class to sell participation in those events. We do a Topgolf event in the fall, and the class sells the bays on the third floor of Topgolf. But in the spring, we do a symposium. Part of this is a twofer. It’s a sales project for the students, because they have to sell the tickets and they have a quota that these teams of students have to meet. But it’s also for us to showcase some of the academic stuff that we’re doing, not only at LSU, but at other universities to give the world of sales what’s happening at the academic level and at the practitioner level. We design it in a way that salespeople and sales leaders can come to these events and walk away with something that they can take back to their company to make them better, to make them a little more productive, more efficient. 

In the past years, we’ve covered the gamut. We’ve done sales technology, we’ve had sales training. We did one with women in sales. We’ve hit all the bases. This year, we decided to turn the lens around. This year the focus is going to be on the buyers. As sellers, we are really so focused on our own skillsets and our own methodologies. Do we have the utmost up-to-date tools? Are we using the right methodologies if our cadences align just right? But very little time is spent setting the buyers. 

My good friend, Leff Bonney, who’s going to be the keynote speaker, gave a talk at one of our academic gatherings a few years ago. I remember Leff’s slide he put up, and the first slide was, yeah, AI has changed selling, but AI has also changed buying. That’s interesting. What has the emergence of AI done to the people who do buying? Luckily, I think there’s enough emphasis now in the academic side, is that’s now geared toward focusing on this evolution of the buying process because of technology. But what’s happening to the selling process is it’s still siloed away from the buying process, it’s aligned with the buyers and how they’re making decisions and how their buying processes have evolved and adapted. We think that we can really come away with something here that helps sellers to step back, not necessarily look at themselves so much, which is important. We know that training is important, keeping up to date, but are you doing anything that’s preventing your buyers from saying yes because your process is antiquated? 

We want to dive into that topic, and that’s the theme we’re going with, is it’s not just a buying process, but it’s also the psychological impact of buyers because of the emergence of artificial intelligence, because that has now entered that space. I think Leff even said it before, is that your buyers probably have better AI tools than the sellers do. Sellers may not even be aware of this, and they’re just going into a sales situation blind without thinking about or studying, what’s going on with my customers or my prospects, and am I doing anything that’s making it harder for them to say yes? 

Fred Diamond: That’s right on target with everything that we hear on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, not just the Office Hours shows. It’s been an evolution probably for the last 20 some odd years that has really accelerated over the last two and a half years with all the GPT tools. We keep talking about this all the time on almost every single Sales Game Changers Podcast and at every Institute for Effective Professional Selling event, is that if you’re not bringing real value to where the customer needs to be in a year or two years from now, they really have no need for you. Like you just said, I’ve never thought about that, but they probably do have great tools, probably better than what we’re using on the sales side. 

I like the way that you’re focusing that because people would say that the customer was 57% down the road, the Challenger statistic that we’ve all been talking about for about 15 years now. It’s probably even further down with AI, because you can get so much more and better information. 

Let’s talk about the agenda. You’re going to be kicking things off with George Talbert from Elon. He’s going to be speaking on From Pitch to Perspective: Why the Future of Sales Starts with the Buyer. You just gave us a great perspective. What do we expect from George? 

Greg Accardo: George is a great friend of mine. He’s at Elon University. George is unique because George does a lot of consulting. In addition to his academic work and his research, a lot of companies go to George for help in solving sales-related problems. George has got a long history, a lot of years of experience working directly with big companies, trying to navigate these complex issues. When I challenged George, I said, “Hey, we’d like to have you come and be part of this event.” He said, “I’ve got a perfect presentation for it.” I don’t want to take too much away from George, but he did tell me that it’s going to be pretty impactful, and it does align with this theme that we want to help sellers to get better educated about buyers. 

Fred Diamond: This topic caught my eye. Kip Knight, tell us about him, and How Sellers Can Build Custom Apps To Attract and Qualify Buyers. 

Greg Accardo: Kip Knight, he’s a great LSU alumni and a great friend of the marketing department at LSU. He’s an entrepreneur. He’s been head of marketing for several companies. Right now he’s head of a startup called CMO Partners. Kip is one of those guys that you want to be around a lot because he’s got that kind of brain, almost like an Elon Musk type thinking. He’s always looking for the next best technology to attract customers and engage with people, because that’s his whole background, is marketing. He’s been a marketing executive his whole life. 

He’s been dabbling in this world now with how do you create these new apps that you can use that would help your buyers find the products that they need and lead them straight to you. Kip is going to talk a little bit about this. There’s always some new software that he’s been experimenting with and he’s tested it. Kip is going to come to this more from the CMO perspective, which I think is important. We should understand what are CMOs looking at, because their whole world’s about attracting buyers. 

Fred Diamond: I love the theme throughout the day. That’s going to continue with Bob Rickert, whose title is The Buyer-Seller Exchange Is Being Rewritten. You very crisply clarified that for us in the beginning of today’s Office Hours – Sales Professors. What do you want to tell us about Bob? 

Greg Accardo: I met Bob about eight years ago. Bob had a book that he had published. It’s called Profit Heroes. I saw the book, I bought it, I read it, I was blown away, so I contacted Bob. I said, “Bob, look, I read your book. This is a game changer. From a sales perspective, I think this is something that’s really impactful if we could teach students how to do this.” Bob and I talked about how could I design this into a class where you’re selling the financial impact. Bob uses some spreadsheets that are calibrated. You can plug in numbers and show a customer very intuitively, if we pursue this pathway, these are some of the outcomes you can expect. I thought Bob would be perfect for this because Bob is also a consultant. I think he’s working on another book now. He’s from the Chicago area, so he is up there working with a lot of the companies in the Chicago area doing his consulting thing. But again, Bob understands, he’s at the ground level. He knows that the script is being rewritten. We want to hear his insights on what he’s seeing and bring a little different light to the subject. 

Fred Diamond: I tell you, man, listening to hear you describe what’s going to be talked about at every session, it’s going to be a masterclass in what selling professionals should be doing. I applaud the young adults who are going to be listening to this as well, and so much great content from them. You mentioned Leff Bonney at FSU, who’s going to be doing the keynote speech, How Buying Behavior Has Changed in the Age of AI, which you touched on. I’ve seen Leff Speak again. He spoke at the University Sales Center Alliance annual meeting back in October at University of Texas Dallas. Obviously, a bright guy, came from industry as well. Anything else you want to tell us about what he’s going to be talking about? 

Greg Accardo: Just to let everyone know, Leff is from Florida State University. He’s a tenure professor in their department of marketing, primarily in sales and sales management. But Leff is a really impressive speaker. I’ve never been to a presentation where Leff was presenting on a topic where I wasn’t just amazed. I think part of that is Leff has a big presence in the consulting world, and he is able to gather all that real-world knowledge and bring it into the academic world, making it part of his research. But he’s always finding these new things, and they’re just amazing. It’s like, why didn’t I think about that? Obviously, it made all the sense in the world to put him at the top of the bill on this and make him the keynote, because again, he was the catalyst of this. I still remember Leff’s presentation years ago about what has AI done to the buying process? Are we even looking at that? That’s been a few years, so I think Leff has got a lot of meat to put on the bone for that with all the research he’s been doing. 

Fred Diamond: Speaking of research, the next topic is going to be Dan Rice. He’s going to be covering The Salesforce-Customer Interaction: Modern Perspectives from Consumer Behavior Research. University, academia, I’m excited. Can you give us some insights into what type of research he’s going to be presenting? 

Greg Accardo: Dan is a colleague of mine here at LSU. Dan is also the director of the Behavioral Research Lab here in the College of Business. Part of that lab is Dan has some really advanced tools for eye tracking, facial recognition. We have technology in there where students go in to do experiments, and you can watch a video and it tracks the muscles in your face with a trend chart to see what parts of that video are positive or negative. Dan’s got some really unbelievable research that he’s been doing recently in the consumer behavior world that really fits into this whole theme about what buyers are seeing and what are they thinking. Part of what we’re going to do with Dan, Dan may even bring his technology and do a demonstration for people, where they’d look at a picture and see the heat map, where their eyes track on the picture. But Dan’s going to bring some insights on what are the modern buyers looking at? What are they thinking about? What’s motivating them? This is going to fit in really nicely with this theme, is that if you’re a seller and you want to get into the mindset of buyers, this is going to be something you’re going to want to walk away with. 

Fred Diamond: Actually, we’ve worked with some companies that have created that type of technology that tracks it. It’s just fascinating. It gives you other angles on how do you engage? As we talk a lot on the Office Hours and the Sales Game Changers Podcast, everything’s about engagement. We’re doing today’s interview in early February of 2026, engagement’s gotten harder. Not just because of AI. The pandemic has shifted so many things. Most of our engagement now is over Zoom and over web-type technology, and there’s only so many things. A lot of sales professionals who were successful in the ‘80s and ‘90s that are still working, early 2000s, they miss the personal interaction. Being with a customer, there’s so much more you can gather. You could see movement, etc., you could see various signs, and that technology we’ve gotten demonstrations of, and it may not be exactly what he’s doing, but it’s similar concepts. It’s absolutely mind blowing some of the things you can discover. 

You’re then going to be winding down the event, the last presentation is with our friend Howard Dover, who also has been a guest on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. He’s covering The End of Spray-and-Pray Outbound: How Precision, Relevance, and AI Are Redefining Go-To-Market. By the way, I want to applaud you for having your agenda set two months ahead. I’ve gone to conferences where it’s completely different, or there’s a lot of TBHs here. Kudos to you for filling this out. How’s Howard going to wrap things up for us? 

Greg Accardo: Howard’s been a mentor of mine since the beginning. We’re great friends. We visit regularly. In case you didn’t know, or your audience doesn’t know, Howard’s got a great book out. It’s called The Sales Innovation Paradox. Highly recommend, anybody in sales or sales leadership, more importantly, should get a copy of that book and read it. But Howard’s at UT Dallas and he’s been at our event before. This is right up Howard’s wheelhouse. Howard comes to this from a perspective as a technologist. Howard understands the benefits of technology, but also understands the limits of technology, and how technology can be great in the sales world, but it can be damaging if it’s misused or overused. I think Howard’s going to turn this around and try to let sellers take a different perspective to study what technologies are being used on the other side of the table from you and how is that putting you either at advantage or at a disadvantage? 

If it’s a disadvantage, maybe you need to adjust. You need to change. If you keep going the way you’re going, this situation is never going to improve itself for us as sellers. I think as sellers, it’s imperative for us to always be cognizant of what’s going on with our customers and our prospects. How are things changing in their world? If we’re not changing and adapting and evolving to make this alignment possible, we’re never going to reach the numbers we want to reach. There’s working hard and working smart. Howard’s the perfect candidate to come in to tie all this together at end of the day. Then at the end of this, when we’re done with Howard, then we’re going to have a discussion panel. What I’m working on now is bringing in some head of procurement and buyers in the local market to come. I’ve got a few who have committed, but have them sit and take questions from the audience based on all the presentations about what they’re actually doing as it relates to these presentations that everyone just heard. 

Fred Diamond: That’s great. We’ve done a couple of shows on the Sales Game Changers Podcast where we’ve had customers, CIOs, CTOs, and they talked about things that are most important to them, and those shows were always great. Really understanding what do they need. I remember I interviewed a CIO on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, and I asked him, “What do you want from sales professionals who call on you?” I expected he was going to say a 10-year roadmap. He said, “Just help me understand how to navigate your company.” How do we get an invoice through? How do we get a customer support request through? That’s going to be a great way to wrap things up. 

We like to end every Sales Game Changers Podcast with an action step. In the beginning of the show, you gave us a lot of good information. You’re going to be presenting great information at the symposium. For people who are just listening or reading the transcript, what is an action step, something specific that you as a sales educator would like to get across to either sales professionals or people who are already in sales, or students, to help them take their sales career to the next level? 

Greg Accardo: There’s so much that I can cover with that, but I can boil it down to this, and this is the same conversation I’ll have with my students. I say, your key to success in sales is that you need to strive and really work hard to understand your customer’s business, even better than they do. It’s not so much that you’re just bringing them a solution to a problem. You need to become a resource also. That’s what separates you from your competitors, because all the products are really good, but what makes you different? That difference needs to be that you are a resource that they can rely on for advice, help, and information. 

Fred Diamond: That is a great bit of advice. I love that. It goes to a lot of your theme with AI. The customer can feel that they’ve gotten everything they need from AI and from the internet, which obviously aggregates it. How do you as a sales professional make yourself distinct? How do you separate yourself from the competition? It’s exactly what you just said. It’s giving your customer some insights on where the world’s going to be in a year from now as it relates to what they’re doing. Like you’re in estate capital, how can they serve the government customer that needs to serve the citizen with whatever it might be? If they’re in financial services, how can they look out to where customers need to be a year from now, two years from now? If it’s in selling entertainment, where are customers going? How are they going to be spending their dollars? Those kinds of things. 

The sales professionals now who are distinguishing themselves are the ones who are coming with those conversations. Like you just said, the customer could find out whatever they need about any product. When I was at Apple Computer, we used to do two days of product roadmap. A customer can type into their GPT, what’s Apple’s Roadmap for the next 10 years? 30 seconds later, there it is. How can you help them understand how they can serve? 

Once again, congratulations. Look forward to having you have a full day at the symposium. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged Sales Game Changers Podcast. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 825: Greg Accardo Details What’ll Be Covered at the April 9 LSU Sales Symposium first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is an Office Hours: Sales Professors Unplugged sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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Fred Diamond: I’m very excited. We have Brian Collins, Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged. Brian, even more excited, you are the 2026 Institute for Effective Professional Selling College Sales Educator of the Year. That is going to be presented to you on April 29th. It’s going to be at the 16th annual IEPS Sales Excellence Awards. Just as a quick notification, we also give out an award at that event called the Jay Nussbaum Rising Sales Star Award. We’re excited, one of your former students, Kevin Riley, is going to be the recipient of that. It’s a great day of celebrating Virginia Tech, you, the program that you’ve developed. How do you feel about being the first College Sales Educator of the Year recipient from the IEPS? 

Brian Collins: Great question. Very humbling. I know when we first met and we were talking about that, to be considered for something like that or for such a prestigious award with all the sales professors that are around the country, and people that I know, and mentors that I’ve had, and people that I’ve worked with, really, really humbling and very thankful that you considered me for that. 

Fred Diamond: We’ve gotten to know a lot of the professors who are running programs associated with the University Sales Center Alliance. I know you’ve been very involved in that organization and some of the committees. This is the first year we’re giving out that award. It just made sense because at the IEPS, we’re spending a lot of time with universities that have these programs, like we’re going to be talking about, to prepare young adults, your students for careers in professional selling, and at great companies, B2B, some cases B2G, business to government. Some cases, I guess it might be more corporate B2C, if you will, but there’s just a lot of synergy with what we do with the IEPS and the work that you’re doing to prepare these young adults for great jobs. 

I know one of the ways we got originally attracted to you, or got to know you, was one of our corporate partners, Cvent, Darrell Gehrt at Cvent has been a big supporter of yours. I believe he was your board of directors’ president at one point. He had been talking for years about the great work that you’ve been doing at Virginia Tech. 

I’m the author of Insights for Sales Game Changers. We frequently do programs with sales organizations, not just new sales professionals, but at Cvent, we would talk to a lot of the young sales professionals. I would sign my book and I would say, “Where’d you go to school?” 

“I went to Virginia Tech. My name is Bill.” 

“Thanks, Bill. Hi, what’s your name? Where’d you go to school?” 

“I’m Mary. I went to Virginia Tech.” 

“Okay. Hi, Mary,” blah, blah, I sign the book. “Hey, what’s your name?” 

“My name is Jared. I went to Virginia Tech,” and Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech, and not just Cvent, but so many companies in the Northern Virginia and the D.C. business community. 

Tell us a little more about yourself. Give us some insights into your journey to Virginia Tech. Like I mentioned, you’re also the director of the Sales Center at Virginia Tech. Tell us what that entails. 

Brian Collins: To start, I am a Hokie. I graduated from Virginia Tech years ago with a BS in finance and a minor in English and an MBA in finance. I’m definitely a Hokie born and bred, was 23 years or so in the real world, mergers and acquisitions, sales, national sales, all of those types of things, and had an opportunity to come back to Virginia Tech to take over the program. I was on a couple of different boards at that time, president of a couple of different boards, and they called me and said, “Hey, we need somebody to help us with the program. Can you take it over? The professor that was here, unfortunately, had to exit.” 

I thought that was going to be a one-year thing, and that was 11 years ago. Time flies. I literally thought it was going to be one thing I would just come and help out for the year and go back into industry, and I loved it. It’s something that going through and understanding where the kids are learning, how they’re learning, how they can use that to better themselves, to get good jobs, to do all those things, my priorities changed. My priorities really changed from going out and grabbing that next deal to coming back and giving back to my university and giving back to the students that are here. 

As director of the sales program, I’m responsible for running all the curriculum to responsible for doing everything with our sponsors. You mentioned Cvent. They’ve been with us, one of the few that have been with us through the beginning. There are a couple others out there, PepsiCo, memoryBlue, just to name a few that have been around since we started, and helped us build this program. It’s not just me. We get a lot of feedback from our sponsors. They keep us up to date. They tell us, “Hey, we’re seeing this in the industry, maybe you should make some changes to your curriculum or think about it.” We all discuss it and we all look at it. If it’s a good thing, then we go do it. 

The director part was more about building the program, building out the sponsors, taking care of everything. In the last 11 years we’ve done that. Now we’re growing to do more things and coming into the future. 

Fred Diamond: You very kindly had me come down a couple of times to do some book signings. It was great to see blue chip companies, Home Depot, PepsiCo, Cvent, CoStar. It’s a great list of companies that you’ve forged relationships with, and these are big companies. These are global brands, obviously. It was great to see the interaction when I’d been down there a couple of times at the career fair with the young adults who were looking to grow. 

Actually, one of the cool things too is a number of your students come from this area. I’m based in Northern Virginia, right outside of D.C., and it was fun. Some of the students came up to me and said, “My dad is a member of the IEPS, or has come to your events, Fred, over the years.” We’re more corporate-focused right now, and a couple of them I’ve linked into. It’s nice whenever I’ll post, I’ll see one of your students comment or like. It’s the ties between what you’ve done in the business community. You’re amazing. 

You mentioned curriculum. Give us a little more insight into your curriculum. Maybe some of the classes you offer. Do you offer a major or a minor or certificate? Tell us about that. 

Brian Collins: That’s a great question, because a lot of the sales programs are very different across the country. We started as a minor and have been a minor for the last 10 and a half years. That also entails concentrations as well. Classes that you take are beginning sales, principles of selling, is what we call it, where you just start learning about B2B sales. Then we have the more senior level, which is usually what I teach, strategic sales force management, which is how you manage your sales folks. 

Then advanced professional sales, which is, for those people that are sales out there, a lot of us are listening to this, it’s basically a role play class. We take them through real live role plays that are from our sponsors, things that have happened or things that are happening, and they go through and they compete. Both of my classes are competitive classes. They’re competing for micro scholarships in amounts of 1,500, 1,000, and 750. It’s actually just like the real world, we try to incent them on doing well and doing better. 

Very excited to say that we were just approved to be a major. As of 2026 in the fall, Virginia Tech will have a professional sales major, one of probably less than 10 universities that I know of across the country that have a full major under marketing and professional sales to go forward. You’ll still be able to get the minor if you’re outside of the school of business, but hopefully those people in the school of business will now either double major, or if they’re in marketing, choose the professional sales as their focus. 

Fred Diamond: That is great. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the universities at the University Sales Center Alliance. One of my little favorite things to do is when I talk to someone new about this, I’ll say, “How many universities in North America do you think have a sales major, minor, or certificate?” The number is probably 70 that have something like that. It’s great to see Virginia Tech coming out with the major in September of 2026. 

I’m just curious. You mentioned they came after you about 11 years ago and said, “Brian, we want to help you create this program.” Give a little bit of insight into how your program fits in with the rest of the university. Obviously, you’re inside the Pamplin School, so how does it fit in there? Then how does it fit in overall? Do people know that there’s an official sales program, professional selling program? Give us some insights into that. 

Brian Collins: Do they know is a great question. Actually, one of the things that we require our students to do is to go tell people. It’s actually one of the things that we, in my strategic sales force class, they have something called spread the word. They are required to call up professors that are at Virginia Tech and get time on their schedule, go into their class, and present on the professional sales program. The way we run this is any major can declare a minor. From that perspective, we have a number of different disciplines that come in. That allows us to go tell that story in a lot of different places. 

Working into Pamplin, Pamplin has been a great place to try to be innovative. They’ve allowed us to take that lead. Both previous Dean Sumichrast and our current Dean Sarker, have both allowed us to be that cutting edge part of the school and try things out. You were asking a little bit about the curriculum. One of the things we also do is everybody that goes through our program, every student, comes out with at least 10 certifications. Those are certifications in things like HubSpot, SmartBox, Salesforce.com, Clay, AI. Lots of different things that we do on that side that Virginia Tech is now saying, “Hey, that was pretty cool. We should do that too.” We’ve done internships, things like that, and now Virginia Tech is going to be requiring us going forward and starting with the incoming class of 2026. 

Seeing those things come to fruition across the campus have been pretty neat. To be able to be a part of that and to have some runway to allow us to make those decisions. Fitting into Pamplin has been wonderful. We get a lot of support. We’re very lucky. Sales, as everyone, especially on this podcast, knows, permeates all. If you’re a computer science major, if you’re an engineer, if you’re a chemistry major, ultimately sales are what’s going to hide to keep your job and create that income. It’s nice having students from all those backgrounds that come in and take the classes. 

Fred Diamond: I love that spread the word idea. It reminds me word of mouth. But I’ve said for years that the best sales person in any company is the receptionist. Obviously, now with voice mail and stuff, it’s easier to get past that person, but everyone’s in sales. Everyone needs to understand what the company does. Having that legion of students out there spreading the word, that’s a brilliant idea. 

Back to your students. What are some of the things that they want to learn? You just mentioned 10 certifications. I didn’t know about that. That’s great to hear. One of the words we use for sales professionals who are exceptional is curiosity. What do they want to learn? What are they curious about? Give us some insights. Related to that, what are some of the skill sets that you emphasize that you believe that they need to be good at? 

Brian Collins: Thinking about what we try to do and what we try to give them as tools in your tool belt, if you will, is trying to work with them on communication skills, I think is a big thing for them. One of the things that’s hard is these things right here, phones and our computers. The generation that we have now is bombarded with technology. How do we step back and teach them the communication part? All good salespeople know you got to listen. That’s one of the first things we have to do, is ask good questions and be quiet and listen. But that’s hard sometimes to teach that because that’s not skill sets necessarily that they’ve learned over the time that they’ve gone to school and things like that, especially in the COVID years and things, which we’re now getting beyond. But that definitely took an effect on that, of how do you teach those skill sets of business? 

We focus on B2B sales at Virginia Tech. Nothing wrong with B2C sales. It’s fantastic. We just choose to focus on B2B. In those conversations, you’ve got to learn how to build trust. You’ve got to learn how to ask good questions. You got to learn how to make a good discovery call, how to listen. The very first thing I ever tell my students when they walk in is it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s about your client. They don’t care if you need to hit your quota. That’s not on their radar. Their radar is they have issues and if you could help them with those issues and find out what they are, hopefully you’re successful. 

Being inquisitive, I think your curiosity is definitely something that’s there, teaching them how to ask those questions, helping them understand that you’re not going to sell every single day. Maybe you will, but more than likely, it’s going to take you a little bit of time to build that relationship. That’s really what this is all about. People buy from people they like. Right now we can all go on the internet and we can find 20 companies that sell the same thing. But if we can find that individual that we deal with that we really like and that we have a good relationship with and we trust, we’re more likely to buy from them than we are from someone else. 

Teaching those skill sets, I think are things that students thrive. They don’t really have, they embrace, they go through. Our students are very coachable. I think from that standpoint, they’re thirsty to learn. Giving them something new and challenging them, they really step up. I’m very lucky I have great students. 

Fred Diamond: I recently coached a student, not at Virginia Tech, at a different school. She said, “How do I make it through the day when people keep saying no?” I said, “You know what? Learn why they’re saying no and be happy when you get a yes. Then figure out, how do I get more yeses?” Because as we know, especially now, it’s harder to get through. It’s hard to get in the door because of security, and people are working not necessarily at offices anymore. You got to be creative. You got to think things through. You got to understand the value that you’re bringing. A lot of the skills that you’re teaching these young adults is so critical for success. 

Brian, we touched on your relationship with corporate sponsors a couple of times. What do they want? Why would a company invest in being a sponsor at a program like Virginia Tech? What kind of return do they want to see from this? What do you tell them that they may not know? 

Brian Collins: In looking at the program and looking at when we first started to set it up, I’m a finance person by trade. Good or bad, I look through the lens of finance, and ROI was extremely important to me. What is the return on investment? That’s a really good question that you posed. We set up things and the reason why we wanted to be for them is things like having their own recruiting day. Rather than going to a large recruiting event that has 3,000 people at it, we can pare that down to one that has 300 that all students want to be a salesman. 

It allows them to cut through a lot of the, I don’t want to say noise, but a lot of the things that are out there, and get to the true students who are studying that and going through. Our statistics show that our kids ramp up 50% faster. When they go into a job, they stay 100% longer. If you’re thinking about, “Hey, I’ve got to spend all this money on training in the first year and things,” one, you’re not going to spend as much because our kids are going to be ready to go. Two, they’re going to be producing for you for a longer time period. An ROI for most of our sponsors is one. They hire one and they’re already way ahead compared to what they’re paying us for those particular students. 

I think two, the other part of that is they get to come into class. The only way to come into our class and to get in front of our students is if you are a sponsor. There are special events that the only way you’re allowed to be at those events is if you’re that. That constant of getting students from the time they’re sophomores all the way up through their senior year, getting familiar with the companies, that also helps because the students know the company. By the time they go to work for Gartner, they know who Gartner is and they know what Gartner does. That’s a big positive as well for the companies, the sharing of the culture. 

Also, they get a lot of interns out of it, and internships in sophomore and junior years. They get to see what that student looks like, how they approach business, all of those things, and see that it’s a fit, maybe culturally or personally, whatever. You have a lot less failure. All of that adds into that ROI of, “I’m going to spend a little bit of money up front, but on the back end, I’m going to be able to go through and see kids that are going to stay long or produce for me quicker. I get my money back really fast.” 

I think the last item I’ll leave with at is also the input on the program. We just recently, actually this past Friday, we had our sales board meeting. One of the things we always do is, tell us what you’re seeing. That’s a lot, where we mentioned certifications earlier, that’s where that idea came from. We have a sales technology class, and that whole class, that whole certification came from our board who said, “Hey, you’re graduating great kids. They’re fantastic. They need more knowledge of CRM. They need more knowledge on how to go through and manage a pipeline. They need to know all that kind of stuff before they come to us.” We said, “Sounds great. Let’s figure out how to do it.” That’s where a lot of those certifications come from. They get to see the kids. They get to interview them. They get special recruiting. They also get input to the program. All those things add up to an ROI for them. 

Fred Diamond: I want to follow up on that last thing that you just said. That’s great that you’re getting the corporate input and the corporations are saying they need to be more tech ready and more tech savvy on some of the tools that they’re going to be using out there. Just one thing I want to highlight is the whole concept of retention. Every corporate sponsor that I’ve spoken to, not just Virginia Tech, but they know that they’re getting students, first of all, who have been educated on how to sell. 

Now, of course, once you’re out in the real world and one of the things which I’m going to ask you about here is, the world’s moving fast. Obviously, AI, etc., which we’re going to talk about here in a second. They need to learn how to be flexible and adjustable and agile and all those kinds of things. But the students who are coming out of these programs like Virginia Tech and a lot of the other USCA schools, they’re three years ahead, five years maybe, of a new hire, and they want to be in sales. It’s not like, “Well, I heard I can make a lot of money. I’m a chemistry major.” They have chosen because they’ve seen a parent or a relative, where they’ve gone to Virginia Tech and somehow the word was spread that got them to take a look at a class or a career fair. It’s huge value, which is why we’re continuing to do these. 

I’m just curious, what are some of the big trends right now? We talk a lot about the trends in professional selling, obviously with AI and more and more digital type of engagement happening. Tell us a little bit about what are some of the main trends you’re seeing, especially as you’re getting ready to launch a major. Just hit on maybe one or two, Brian. 

Brian Collins: I think AI is definitely one that’s on the tip of everybody’s tongue right now. It’s hard to avoid. We’ve chosen, in our sales program, to embrace that. There are some universities and some professors who will say, “I want them to ignore AI. It’s not allowed in my class. We’re not going to do that.” We don’t do that in sales. We view it as a way to work smarter, not harder. That process of going through, we make sure our kids are documenting what they’re doing. But from the standpoint of going out and making an email as something for a role play, they’ve got to contact a client that we’re playing. 

Create your email and then put it into Copilot, Chat, whatever you want, see what that comes back with. Does it give you any ideas that maybe you didn’t know, or some things that were tweaks that were good? It doesn’t mean you use that as the sole provider, but it does mean that you can use it for support and maybe make your message more targeted and better received. You mentioned earlier, people may not be in their offices, it may not be easy to get in touch with them. It’s a whole lot harder maybe now than it used to be. How can we target those things that makes it about them, that makes them want to respond? Well, there’s some things out there that can help you with that. Why not use it? 

When we talk to our sponsors, a lot of them are the same. They’re using that to make it more targeted and to get into those areas. Using things like LinkedIn and going through some of their products that a lot of the companies use, and being very targeted and special with the way you do that. I think AI is definitely going to make a change. I’m looking and I don’t know. I could be way wrong on this, and nobody really knows, I’m wondering how long the SDR position will be like it is now. If you have a computer, just for example, who will call 24 hours a day, never get sick, never cares about saying no, never cares, it’s just dialing the next number to get you that appointment, potentially to me, that means SDRs, we may need fewer. But the good news is, I think the BDRs, we need more, because they’re going to have more to follow up on. That depends on your company, what you use. In our world, SDRs are usually the ones generating some of those initial contexts. BDRs are usually the ones that are trying to close it. 

I think that you’re going to see a change too. Again, I may be wrong, this may be way in the future, but as quickly as things are happening, as prices come down, to be able to afford that, I think you’ll see more and more people think about investing in that world. I may be naive, I don’t think you’re ever in the B2B world going to take away the human factor. I think people like to deal with people and I think, ultimately, you’re going to still have people involved in that process. I think it’s just going to change. I think it’s just going to modify and become a little bit different. You know what? Good news about salespeople, we all know what change is. Change happens every day. If there’s anybody equipped to handle that, it’s probably sales. I’m not really worried about our students adapting. I’m just trying to figure out what’s coming. 

Fred Diamond: Once again, Brian, great stuff. Congratulations on the success of the program. Give us a final thought, something specific for us to put into play, perhaps, to wind down today’s show. 

Brian Collins: As you look at your business, go back through and really be honest with yourself. One of the things that I always tried to do when I was managing salespeople, and then also when I was managing my own pipeline, too, is spend the time where you’re going to be most beneficial. Sometimes we try to leave things in thinking they’re going to happen and knowing really in the back of our mind that they aren’t. Make the decision, move forward, save yourself some time. The one thing that we all don’t have is time. If we’re spending our time on the wrong things, it’s not going to help you in your career.  

That also, too, as your halftime, which is few and far between, get yourself some more education, and I don’t necessarily mean going to Virginia Tech. We’d love to have you, but podcasts, things like that. I’ll give a plug right now for you. I use your podcasts in my class. Our students, I’ll have them listen to sales professionals and listen to what their experience has been and how they’ve gone through. I’ve done that for years now. It’s learning from others and taking that in, and I think anytime you can do that. It could be a continuous learner, manage your pipeline, and do the best you can. You’re going to have good days and bad days, we all know that, hopefully you have more good ones. 

Fred Diamond: Absolutely, keep moving forward. All right. Brian Collins, Virginia Tech. Thank you so much. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Office Hours – Sales Professors Unplugged Podcast. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 824: College Sales Educator of the Year Brian Collins Prepares Students for Elite Sales Careers first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.