Two seniors win Amica Elon Challenge

The team of Sharin Gerstenberger ’16 and Kelley Hill ’16 placed first in the inaugural Amica Elon Challenge, a sales competition that provides Elon students an opportunity to develop their professional selling skills.

Samantha Lutz, a senior economics and management double major, and Madison Tamblyn, a senior management major, were named the runner-up team.

During the fall 2015 semester, Amica Mutual Insurance Company partnered with Elon’s Chandler Family Professional Sales Center to offer the competition, which aimed to have students create a sales pitch to recruit college students to apply to work for Amica as an associate adjuster. In two-person teams, students submitted a writen sales presentation and recorded a role play in which one student acted as an Amica recruiter and the other student was a prospective employee applying for the associate adjuster position. The winners were selected by a group from Amica.

“We thoroughly enjoyed both the process and the results of the 2015 Amica Elon Challenge,” said Alexandria Waddell, claims supervisor at Amica Mutual Insurance Company. “Elon University is one of my favorite schools to recruit from for our Future Leaders Program. The students are highly engaged, enthusiastically do their research and display great communication skills. Our goal with the Amica Elon Challenge was to gather input from students on what they are looking for in an employer and how to communicate those desires in the recruiting and hiring process. The work produced from the Amica Elon Challenge is a testament to the high caliber students we have come across at Elon.”

The first-place team was awarded $1,300 and the second-place team received $700.

Erin Gillespie, assistant professor of marketing, Coleman Rich, chair of the Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and Raghu Tadepalli, dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, served as consultants to participating teams.

“Overall, the Amica Elon Challenge provided us with a great opportunity to practice our sales skills in a real-world setting,” said Gerstenberger, an international business major. “I gained a better understanding of what it takes to ‘sell’ a well-renowned company and position to undergraduate students such as myself and my peers.”

“This experience taught me more about the insurance industry as a whole, which will be helpful to me going into my future career in insurance,” added Hill, a marketing major. “It also gave me an opportunity to work on my selling skills in role play and written form.”

About Amica Mutual Insurance Company
Established in 1907, Amica is the oldest mutual insurer of automobiles in the U.S. Amica has 3,400 employees nationwide and 44 offices throughout the country. The company is consistently recognized as one of the best places to work in Rhode Island and has received numerous awards for its customer service to its policyholders.

About the Chandler Family Professional Sales Center
The Chandler Family Professional Sales Center promotes professional selling and sales management, provides high-quality instruction to both students and sales executives, and conducts research that advances the field of sales. The program’s strong sales curriculum and experiential learning component earned it the distinction as a “Top University Sales Program for 2015” by the Sales Education Foundation, a section of The Dayton Foundation established to promote university level educational programs in sales through the provision of scholarships, creation of educational materials and other methods.