Two seniors excelled at the 2012 Russ Berrie Institute National Sales Challenge held in November at William Paterson University.
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The Elon team of David Goltz ’13 and Caroline Scalici ’13 won the Overall Team Championship at the 2012 Russ Berrie Institute National Sales Challenge held Nov. 14-16 at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
Goltz was also named the Overall Individual Champion after successfully competing against more than 60 students.
The annual RBI National Sales Challenge consists of two events: speed selling and sales call role-play. Goltz placed second in the speed-selling event and first in the role-play event. Scalici placed in the top 10 in both events.
The RBI National Sales Challenge brings sales students from across the country to meet with representatives from major corporations for a sales competition designed to hone students’ sales skills and help students obtain real-world business knowledge while networking with executives.
“The competition not only allowed us to showcase our abilities in a real world setting to some of the most successful companies in the world,” Goltz said, “but it was also a tremendous opportunity for us to represent our university at a national level.”
Goltz and Scalici, both Chandler Family Professional Sales Center students in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, prepared for the competition with Michael Rodriguez, faculty coach and assistant professor of marketing, and student coaches David Brown ’13, Richard Crittenden ’13 and Caitlin Jones ’13.
“My biggest takeaway from the competition was how important it is to have a strong team behind you,” Scalici said. “Without our coaches’ support and dedication, there is no way we could have done half as well as we did.”
More than 30 schools participated in the challenge, including Western Michigan University and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
This was Elon’s third appearance at the challenge. In 2011, Lindsay Richardson ’12 won the sales call role-play and Allison Kutz ’12 won the speed-selling event. In 2010, Elon was named Overall Team Champion, and Meg Anderson ’11 won the role-play and speed-selling events and was named Overall Individual Champion.