Orfalea College of Business (OCOB) is accepting applications now for their new sales minor, set to debut Fall 2019. Administration, faculty and staff collaborated to form the minor after students expressed a need for more sales-related curriculum, according to marketing professor Lisa Simon.
“We saw a need to give students a stronger foundation in professional selling skills,” Simon said. “[The minor] will offer [students] an opportunity to launch their sales careers with a tool kit of knowledge and skills already prepared for them.”
The 28-unit minor will include three brand new required courses: Professional Selling Skills (BUS 347), Technology-Based Professional Sales (BUS 348) and Current Topics in Marketing (BUS 450). In addition to the three core courses, students pursuing a sales minor will have to select four of the 19 pre-approved elective courses to take. The elective courses offered come from a variety of departments including Wine and Viticulture, Industrial Manufacturing Engineering and Graphic Communication.
The application process consists of an online questionnaire and an interview with Simon. Only 40 students will be selected to participate in the sales minor for the 2019-2020 school year. Simon encourages students of all majors to apply.
Simon will go over the details of the minor at an information session Thursday, Feb. 28 at 11 a.m. in Business (building 3, room 209).
“If you are an engineer selling a plan or an idea to a client, if you are in finance selling an idea to your supervisors and managers, if you are a writer selling what you are writing to a publisher, everybody is in sales. So, the skills that students would pick up through the sales minor are applicable regardless of the career that student enters,” Simon said.