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This Document is at: http://voyager.cbe.wwu.edu/courses/482/syllabus.shtml
WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY COURSE SYLLABUS (subject to change) Fall Quarter 2007
Instructor T.J. Olney Class meeting Monday Wednesday 2PM - 3:50 ES 80 Office 431 Parks Hall Phone 650-4818 email market@cc.wwu.edu
Course Objectives The main objective of this course is to prepare you for the real world of sales, sales management and the for the social, legal, and ethical aspects of the modern technologically sophisticated global selling environment. A major consideration in hiring and retaining people in both marketing and selling positions is their ability to communicate orally in front of an audience. For this reason, presentations of several kinds are the focus of this course. Hence this course represents a communications focused course. In addition to oral presentations, you will be asked to prepare a written report on a topic that a sales manager might require. Topics will be distributed in class and posted to the WWW later. This Marketing elective course is suggested for any business and non-business majors who may at some point of their career find themselves in a selling or sales management position. The course will cover various aspects of selling and management of a sales force, including the social, legal and political ramifications of their behavior. Both academic theory and practical methods will be brought to bear on the problems of selling and managing the sales force. One goal of this course is to inform students of what is expected of them upon entering the working world and how to move up within the ranks. Students may expect to leave with a limited set of experiences directly related to selling and a fairly good knowledge of the commonalties shared by all selling functions. As such, it is an applied course with an emphasis on participation in presentations, development of sales pitch, personal interaction, and the experience of dealing with public rejection and stress. Much of the classroom time will be spent in formal presentations by students. Active listening and critique is expected by each member of the audience. In addition, students will be expected to be able to develop sales forecasts, manage a territory, and know the fundamentals of making sound hiring decisions. Prerequisites Principles of Marketing (MKTG 380) and MKTG 382
Readings WWW: Other required readings will be made from the World
Wide Web. Links for readings can be found in this document.
An email mailing list (listserver) has been set up for this class. You
must subscribe to and participate in this email list as part of the course.
To subscribe, send email to listproc@lists.wwu.edu with no subject and
the body containg the phrase:
Homework Homework assignments are the readings, the sales call plans, the self-evaluations, and presentation related documents, which will be assigned in class. Students should do the reading and prepare the cases prior to the class in which they are listed or assigned. I reserve the right to have pop quizzes on the reading assigned for any given day, the results of which will affect your grade. Written Report Your written report will be a thorough analysis of some industry or functional problem that could face a sales manager. The assignment will be vague, it will be up to you to decide what information will allow your boss to make the decisions needed. It could be anywhere from a 5 to a 50 page report, but average will be about 15 pages including appropriate charts and other graphics. The tone of the report should be authoritative and persuasive. There should be references to your source materials that you will get by using the resources of Wilson Library. Quick and dirty WWW searches for information will not be adequate, but can serve as a starting place. Participation You will be graded on overall class participation. Class participation grades will be dependent on the quality of relevant discussion, which shows thoughtful reading of the material and critical active listening. Additional cases and study questions may also be assigned during class time for class discussion. Additional class participation credit is possible for bringing relevant work experience and current events articles to the class and telling us about them. All students start with a participation grade of zero and it can only go up. If you have trouble participating, you will have trouble with selling. This is the ideal no loss situation in which to overcome your fears. There can be no participation without attendance. I will occasionally take attendance. Winter quarter is 17 sessions, missing one day is missing more than 5% of the classes! Selling Yourself This is actually a sub-set of participation, but I put it here for emphasis. You cannot earn any participation points, if by the end of the quarter, you haven't taken the personal responsibility to make sure that I know who you are. Do not assume that I know your name, or anything else about you. Participation grades will be assigned based on my ability to recall you and your classroom behavior when I look at a list with your name on it. You must be assertive and do whatever it takes (it really doesn't take all that much) to have me know who you are, and to have positive associations with your name. That is what this course is about. You must also sell yourself to your classmates. They should all know your name, and something about you by the end of the quarter. It is your responsibility to make sure that they do! Sales Presentations There will be two sales presentations. They will both be for products or services of your choosing which must be approved prior to the presentation. The first presentation will be short, about 10 minutes and will be video taped. The second will be at the end of the course, and will require a demonstration of the product you are selling. It will last 8 to 12 minutes and will also be video taped. An integral part of your presentations will be the preparation of a proposal, a sales call plan, and a clear document that will inform your buyer what he or she is expected to know (not what s/he is expected to say). After the first presentation, you will also prepare a self evaluation as part of the assignment. People who miss their appointed day and hour to present will have their scores multiplied by .8 on those presentations when made. Your grade on the presentation will reflect the preparation that you have made as well as the effectiveness of your presentation, including all aspects of selling. This includes but is not limited to your presentation of self as a credible salesperson for your product. Buyer Participation When others give their presentations you will be asked to act as a buyer. The quality of your role playing makes a big difference in the effectiveness of the exercise. Therefore you will receive a part of your grade reflecting this special participation. One skill of great value in the business world is the ability to role play the part of your customers and competitors in order to better anticipate their needs and actions. Acting as a buyer develops that skill. Group Presentation During the second half of the course, you will each be involved in the creation of a group presentation on a topic related to Sales Management that will be based on library research about the assigned topic. During these presentations, teams should think of themselves as part of a Sales Enhancement Training company, whose presentations help sales managers to better understand their jobs. Teams will be randomly assigned and topics randomly assigned to teams. Much Sales Management information has already been presented in your other management courses, and your job will be to contextualize the more general knowledge into sales specific knowledge and to present it to the class. The final exam will include portions written by each group covering the material that they cover in class. These presentations should be professionally done, including relevant visual aids, and include smooth transitions from one person to the next, with each person having equal time. (See the full page about this near the end of this syllabus .) Examinations There will be two exams, one mid-term and a final. These exams will cover material discussed in class as well as material covered only in the readings. There will be no make-up exams except in extreme cases. Grading Course grading will be determined by the following weighting scheme.
Session, Date, Topics, and Assignments* The following schedule is tentative, we should be able to stick
to it fairly closely, but in any case, you are responsible for the readings
assigned whether we are "on schedule" with class discussion or not. The
number of students in the class makes a large difference for scheduling.
The Final Examination will most likely be a multiple choice and short answer. It will cover all the material in the course, including presentations by students on management topics, any guest presentations, and highlights of sales presentations of made by students during the quarter. * The schedule is tentative and may be changed during the course of the term to allow for guest speakers and changes in materials covered. If the class is smaller than 16 people or larger than 24 people, the schedule will change significantly. The final exam for this class will be held as scheduled by the University. Which appears to be: Thursday, December 13 10:30 - 12:30 pm Please check because I regularly get this wrong!
Homeworks and guides for your sales presentations For both sales presentations: For your sales presentations, you are expected to choose a product to sell to some member of the class. You will be evaluated on how well you make your approach to your buyer; how well you establish the need for your product in the buyer's mind; how well you make the transition from the approach to the presentation; and how well you express the features, advantages and benefits of your product. In order to accomplish this, you will need to choose a fairly complex product so that your buyer can ask intelligent questions about it to help himself or herself establish what needs are being addressed. It will also have to be something that you as salesperson can ask intelligent questions of the buyer and expect reasonable answers. Buyers will be evaluated on how realistic they are in their role. They have real needs which the product might address, however, they are not actively in the market for the product. They also have budget constraints and are undecided as to final product form. They have never met you before. They may or may not know about your company. For the first sales presentation, you may be selling to an organization, or (less preferred) at a retail level to an end user. The expected time for the sales activity is 8-10 minutes. For the second sales presentation, you must be selling to an organization (it may be a retailer who will be reselling the product). The expected time for the second sales presentation is 10-12 minutes. (If we happen to have a small class, these second presentations can be longer.)
Is should include, who the buyer is, what they are currently doing vis a vis any problems that your product might address, and what they need to know about the industry in general. These are due the day of the Mid-term... 2)The same things for presentation #2 are due on the day you make your presentation and count as part of your presentation grade. 3)Homework -- Due 1 week after your first presentation: Go to the library special collections or download from the link I will provide the video of your presentation. Watch yourself on video. Write up a critique of all the things that you did well, and all the things that you could have done better. You may use the presentation evaluation form as a starting place, but write out full sentences giving specific suggestions for improvement. You will not receive your grade on the first presentation until after you turn in your self evaluation to me. 4) Do the same self-evaluation for your second sales presentation. This
is due at the final exam.
Group Presentations -- another opportunity to hone your presentation skills. You will be doing a group presentation of a selected topic in Sales Management. The topics are listed above and expanded at this link. You will be expected to start from a standard Sales Management Textbook, and expand your coverage of your topic by doing research in the library. The presentation will last 50 minutes and should be lively and informative. In general- Presentations should professional, rehearsed and timed.- Each person should be introduced by the person before, telling what they are going to talk about and what they have done to become an expert on the subject. - You should include a page of references to your sources in the copies for class, including relevant page numbers for articles and for sections of books that you may have used. - You should have a PowerPoint or other computer based presentation, copies of the outline to hand out for class to use as a basis for notes. (If you get them to me at least a day in advance, I'll get the copies.) (A computer-based presentation is mandatory, unless you come up with some other stunning way to add sizzle to your presentation, you should plan to use power-point or a web browser as your presentation tool.) - You will also hand out a set of at least 10 multiple choice questions that the class should be able to answer following your presentation. These questions should cover the conceptual highlights of the topic area, and the most important details of the topic. - If you make the mistake of creating a piecemeal presentation, with each individual doing some part, not coordinated with the others, be sure that your overheads are designated as yours. - You should conduct yourselves as if you are part of a training firm. You have been asked to do an example presentation to demonstrate how good your training firm is. A decision will be made by the audience about whether to hire your firm for a long term training contract. The success of your firm depends on getting this training contract.
- You should email your power point or other presentation material to me and I will post it to the class web page. - Again, as part of your presentation, you will prepare 10 multiple choice questions that represent the things that you think are the most important aspects of what you have presented. These should be emailed to me and will be posted as well. I have sales management text books that I can loan to you to get you started. The best library resource is the periodical "Sales and Marketing Management." Other likely sources of material are Inc. Magazine (online) and Fast Company also online. The ABI/Inform Global database has a wealth of current articles on all the topics. If you are having trouble finding them, change your search terms. If you still have trouble, see Hazel Cameron, business librarian.
Grading Criteria for Group presentations 2) Quality of Material Presented 3) Coverage of your topic -- check with me if you are unsure of what you should cover. 4) Integration of topic into big picture. (How does it relate especially to sales management, as opposed to other kinds of management.) 5) Selling of why the topic is important to us, what is the benefit to the audience of knowing about this, given their role as new managers. Extra Credit The maximum extra credit that you could obtain is 5 points on the same scale as the course total. There is no guarantee that the work that you turn will merit any extra credit points. Come to me with topics in mind that you feel will significantly enhance your understanding of the material of the course. I will not provide topics, only approve or disapprove of the ones that you choose. No extra credit papers will be accepted which have not been approved by me in advance as acceptable topics. Extra credit papers will be evaluated on the basis of the thoroughness of the research, the understanding of the material demonstrated, the relevance of the topic to the course, and the quality of the writing. Extra credit papers must be completed and handed in before noon on the
Tues. of Finals week.
Link to the
Evaluation
form used for sales presentations: |
