Sales students score experience, job interviews at Atlanta competition

04/14/2011 9:42 AM

Wake up at 8 a.m. and don’t stop until one-o’clock the next morning. Repeat.

That was the schedule for two Bradley students who participated in the National Collegiate Sales Competition (NCSC) in March.

Daniel Kahne and Natalie Morton, the winners of the BU Sales Contest in December, traveled to Atlanta to contend on a national level.

“I enjoyed it a lot, but it was exhausting,” Kahne said. “By the time I got back to Peoria I was pretty dead.”

The NCSC is a tournament-style competition where students sell their product, NetSuite, to a customer in a role-play. The role-play is captured by video camera and observed by eight judges in another room who evaluate students based on how well they identify the buyer’s needs and promote the NetSuite product.

Kahne made it to the quarterfinals, the top 48 of 120 contestants.

His main reason for competing came down to one thing: his personality.

“A lot of sales people are extremely competitive,” Kahne said. “I’m one of them. I love to compete. I want to put myself to the test to see how good I really am. The NCSC is the top-level competition to go to, so of course I would want to try and go there.”

Along with the actual sales contest, the NCSC hosted a job fair for students to network with major companies as well as with students from different schools. Bradley was one of 63 universities across the nation that participated in the NCSC.

“It was huge,” Kahne said. “The job fair was the most impressive thing I have ever seen. There were so many employers; I’m still getting calls from all sorts of people.”

In fact, the fair was the most rewarding part of the NCSC for Kahne.

“The job opportunity was phenomenal,” Kahne said. “I talked to so many different people. As of right now, I have three interviews because of it and I’ve had to turn down several because it’s getting to the point where I’m getting too many.”

Kahne has interviews lined up for sales position with Johnson & Johnson, Reynolds & Reynolds, and Rexkitt Benkiser.

“Persistence and perseverance are everything in the world of sales,” Kahne said. “Even though I didn’t do as well as I wanted to, the fact that I represented myself well and kept a high spirit led me to some very promising job opportunities.”