Vector Marketing Canada

Students Learn Lessons in Selling and Giving

Calgary Herald,    Thursday, April 1 2010

Byline: Mario Toneguzzi

There are two qualities that celebrate the spirit of Calgary’s life. Entrepreneurship and volunteerism.

They are qualities that define who we are and how we live our lives.

So I was duly impressed recently when I discovered how both these qualities were being developed and nurtured through a unique learning experience at the University of Calgary.

Derek Hassay, assistant professor of marketing at the Haskayne School of Business at the U of C, took over a sales management course several years ago. Trying to teach students sales is a difficult thing. It’s not a theory-based course. It’s one based on skills. And the university was interested in trying to provide students with more experiential learning opportunities. Typically courses may have case studies. They might have computer simulation. Occasionally they might do a real project for a real client.

A typical model for a sales course would be role playing. But that’s so artificial. Yes it’s a little bit of pressure in front of your classmates. But it doesn’t give them rejection. It doesn’t give them the experience with actual sales.

“I wanted to infuse the course, when I took it over, with some experiential learning. At the same time, it’s a sales management course. It’s not just a personal selling course. So I wanted to create something where there was some real sales management practices going on,” says Hassay.

The original idea was to get the students to sell products in the real world. What resulted was the Selling Smiles 101 project which is part of the course. Students work with Cutco Cutlery, the largest kitchen cutlery manufacturer in North America, in direct sales, selling product through in-home personal demonstrations. Cutco already used students as primary sales people. So Hassay thought it would be a really good fit for students to learn about sales.

“I needed them to step out of themselves a little bit. Probably since the time they were four they’ve been out selling products to raise money for something or other,” he says.

Cutco came into the classroom and offered training. ”To get students interested in the course, because it’s an elective, it’s not required, I wanted to do something bigger and sort of better. So instead of them keeping the money we decided we would give the money to charity. So all the proceeds that we make go to whatever the identified charity was,” says Hassay.

The project began the first year, five years ago, with one class of about 30 students and that year they raised $3,000 for the Canadian Canadian Cancer Society. And while every dollar counted, there wasn’t a personal connection for the students to the charity.

For the past four years, the project has been raising money for the Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada. In the second year, the course doubled in size to two classes and it has been operating that way ever since. ”And the connection there has just been an extremely powerful one. It’s tangible. We introduce the students to the families and children that we’re raising money for now right at the very beginning of the term. So that they know what they’re working toward,” says Hassay.

; “It’s an important thing because the family actually appreciates how hard the students are working on their behalf. The students work incredibly hard. This is not an easy thing to go out. We’ve raised as much as $43,000 in a term. In total we’ve raised over $100,000 now for Children’s Wish Foundation in four years.

“It really is a powerful learning model for one.  It has stopped becoming a sales course a long time ago. This is so much bigger now. The students are profoundly impacted. We’ve had students who have graduated and gone on to work in the non-profit field because they found their place in society as a result of the course. We’ve had students who go on and are now fundraisers and volunteers with the Children’s Wish Foundation so they’ve found the personal connection to the charity.

“It really is a transformative experience for the students.” An alumni group has even been formed and the program is even being copied in some universities in the United States.  The course is capped at 70 students, with two classes of 35 each.

“It is a great way to teach sales but it’s a great to teach them the other things as well. You have to give back,” says Hassay.

“The thing is all of our students are going to do very well. They’re going to have great careers but they may have different careers as a result of this or they may lead their lives differently because they were exposed so early to charities and volunteerism.”

*Reprinted with the express permission of:  Calgary Herald Group Inc., a Canwest Partnership.