Senior marketing major Lisa Vicicondi showed off her sales skills in a recent competition when she took first place in a sales competition.

The challenge was put on by The Effner Financial Group and sponsored by the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network.

Competing against 10 people, Vicicondi impressed the judges, aka her “clients,” and applied what she learned in the classroom into action in the real world.

“Lisa was selected because she did the best job with her introduction, fact finder, presentation, and close,” said Dana Anton, Director of Recruitment for NMFN.

Vicicondi received $1,000 for finishing atop the competition.

“She was a natural. Hopefully it gave her the opportunity to see that she could really do it,” Anton said.

Vicicondi had to come up with a three to five minute pitch to convince a student to apply to NIU.

“In this competition I learned a lot about approaches,” Vicicondi, said. “I really wasn’t nervous, I just thought win or lose it would be a great learning experience.”

The winner was selected based on a combination of presentations and interview scores.

Participating in the competition was an effort Vicicondi chose to do in hopes to achieve the State Sales Certificate.

“I think I stood out in the competition because it came very easy to me to talk about NIU, so I was very confident. I knew what I was doing,” Vicicondi said.

Since this is an annual competition, EFG and NMFN are looking forward to see if next years competitors will top this year’s.

“For someone who will compete next year, the best advice that I could give them is to imagine selling yourself whatever your’e trying to sell someone else, and to be themselves,” Vicicondi said.