Michael Rodriguez, assistant professor of marketing, has been named director of the Chandler Family Professional Sales Center.
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Michael Rodriguez, assistant professor of marketing in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, has been named the director of the Chandler Family Professional Sales Center.
As director, Rodriguez is responsible for increasing student interest in professional sales careers, reaching out to sales organizations who are looking for the best in sales talent and further developing Elon’s sales program.
“I am excited to build on the success of the Chandler Family Professional Sales Center,” Rodriguez said. “Elon has attracted dozens of sales organizations from around the country. My goal is to further develop the sales center into a nationally recognized program.”
Rodriguez has taught the Professional Selling, Principles of Marketing and Customer Relationship Management courses in the Love School of Business’ undergraduate and graduate programs since 2009.
Rodriguez earned his Ph.D. in Technology Management from Stevens Institute of Technology, where he won the Most Outstanding Dissertation Award. His research interests include customer relationship management, sales leadership and sales management. He has been published in the Journal of Selling and Major Account Management and the International Journal of Innovation and Business Research, and serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.
Prior to joining Elon, Rodriguez worked on Wall Street for 14 years selling market data and trading platforms to investment banks, asset managers and hedge funds.
Rodriguez succeeds Earl Honeycutt as the director of the center. Honeycutt, who was the Martha and Spencer Love Term Professor of Marketing, retired from Elon this past May.
“Dr. Rodriguez, along with Professor Emeritus Honeycutt, has been instrumental to growing Elon’s sales program and successfully coaching our students to win international competitions,” said Raghu Tadepalli, dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. “I look forward to working with him to continue the center’s success as one of the nation’s best university-based sales programs.”
The Chandler Family Center prepares students to jump start their careers in professional sales through national sales competitions, workshops led by high-profile executives and industry advancing research. The program’s strong sales curriculum and experiential learning component earned it the distinction as a “Top University Sales Program for 2012” by the Sales Education Foundation. Additionally, The Chandler Family Center is a full member of the University Sales Center Alliance, a consortium of sales centers located in universities throughout the United States.
The center was established in 2008 by an endowment gift from Elon Trustee Thomas E. Chandler, owner of Chandler Concrete Company, and his family.