Personal Selling involves person-to-person communication, which requires one to have interpersonal skills and expertise to persuade leads into closing deals for products and/or services. There are a multitude of different types of personal selling, including retail sales, business-to-business, and telemarketing.
In the Fall of 2023, I attended the Marketing: Into to Personal Selling course at Virginia Commonwealth University. This class was taught by Dr. Jonathan Gilbert, who assigned a semester long role play assignment where students practice for a final sales meeting.
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Students were asked to prepare and practice for “real” sales meeting pitching a real product to a fictitious company. This includes walking the company through all 10 steps of the sales process. The assignment was cumulative, where each part of the sales technique SPIN is broken down individually. SPIN stands for Situation, Problem, Implication, and Needs payoff. For each part of spin students would film a 5-10 minute video performing each part with a partner.
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Each section of the SPIN technique required a mock script and practice video. My partner and I would spend hours at a time rehearsing our scripts and making trial videos. These individual videos would be submitted as cumulative assignments throughout the semester. At the end of the semester, in place of a final exam, would be the “real” in person role play with a series of judges.
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After all of the students in class had completed their final role play scenarios, Dr. Gilbert announced the results. Students received distinguished honors and the places from 8th to 1st place. I received first place, with 200 points across the score card from the panel of judges.
