Elon students complete Amica Elon Challenge

The team of seniors Danielle Halliday and Riley Billman placed first in the 2016 Amica Elon Challenge, a sales competition designed for Elon students to develop their professional selling skills.

Josh Ellsworth ’19 and Taylor Stuck ’18 were named the runner-up team.

During October, Amica Mutual Insurance Company partnered with Elon’s Chandler Family Professional Sales Center to offer the competition, which aimed to have students create a recruiting sales pitch for Amica targeted at college students. In two-person teams, students wrote a sales presentation and recorded a role play in which one student acted as an Amica recruiter to convince the other student, a prospective candidate, to apply for an associate adjuster position with the company. The winners were selected by a group from Amica.

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

Erin Gillespie, assistant professor of marketing and director of the Chandler Family Professional Sales Center, and Nawar Chaker, assistant professor of marketing, served as consultants to participating teams.

“We have had nothing but great experiences recruiting on Elon’s campus,” said Alexandria Waddell, claims supervisor at Amica Mutual Insurance Co.. “The work produced from this challenge is another testament to the high caliber students we have come across at Elon!”

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 2016” by the Sales Education Foundation, a section of The Dayton Foundation. The Chandler Family Center is a full member of the University Sales Center Alliance (USCA), a consortium of sales centers located in universities throughout the United States.