Seniors Cathy Schubert and Kristen Wrigley won the professional selling competition for Elon students.
The team of strategic communications major Cathy Schubert ’18 and marketing major Kristen Wrigley ‘18 placed first in the 2017 Amica Elon Sales Challenge, a competition designed for Elon students to develop their professional selling skills.
Marketing majors Max Gould ’18 and Meredith Broderick ’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 involved students creating a recruiting sales pitch for Amica targeted at college students. The competition consisted of a written sales proposal and a role play in which one team member played an Amica recruiter trying to convince a college student to apply for an associate adjuster position with Amica.
The first-place team was awarded $1,300 and the second-place team received $700. The winners were selected by a group from Amica.
Erin Gillespie, assistant professor of marketing and director of the Chandler Family Professional Sales Center, Nawar Chaker, assistant professor of marketing, Raghu Tadepalli, dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, Mike Gannaway, Love School of Business executive-in-residence, and Coleman Rich, chair of the Department of Marketing and International Business, served as consultants to participating teams.
“2017 marks the third year we have held the Amica Elon Sales Challenge,” said Alexandria Waddell, claims supervisor at Amica Mutual Insurance Company. “Each year I become more impressed by the professionalism and creativity of the students that participate. We hope to make this competition a lasting tradition with Elon.”
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.
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 2017” 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.