Kelley student takes first at competition

On Oct. 22 sophomore Alix Moll, a member of IU's Global Sales Leadership Club, bested over 30 other students to capture the state title at the Midwest Sales Competition held at Ball State University in Muncie. Senior Cameron Gwinn, juniors Jeff Martin and Lauren Hilgeford, and sophomore Allison Baumann also performed well for IU. This is the first time IU has sent students to the competition.\nIn the competition, participants were videotaped on a hypothetical sales call and were observed and critiqued by several industry professionals. By using the SPIN technique for their sales calls, IU's team was able to outperform the competition. \n"SPIN is a counterintuitive way of approaching a sale," Hilgeford said. "It focuses on uncovering the buyer's needs through a series of questions."\nPioneered by Neil Rackham, the SPIN technique has become a standard in the marketing industry, with half of the Fortune 500 companies using this technique to train their sales teams.\nThe Global Sales Leadership Club spent weeks preparing for the competition. \n"We went through the hyperlearn training for SPIN selling taught by our coach, Dick Canada," Baumann said. "Hyperlearn is a rigorously paced method of learning the correct way to approach for a sales call."\nThe Global Sales Leadership Club is in its third year on campus, with about 50 members. It is one of the cornerstones for the Center for Global Sales Leadership, located at the Kelley School of Business. For more information about the Global Sales Leadership Club, see its Web site at http://www.iub.edu/~gslc.