NIU business students are prepared to wow their employers with their expertise.

Dan Weilbaker, an NIU marketing professor, said a group of faculty started a sales emphasized program in 1989 that focused on business-to-business selling.

The program includes Principles of Selling (Marketing 350), Sales Management (Marketing 446) and Advanced Professional Selling (Marketing 450).

He said students graduating from the program become successful quickly.

“Even when the economy is not as strong as it should be, our sales students are still getting jobs,” he said.

Marketing majors and minors are required to take a principles of advertising course, and Weilbaker said this tends to encourage students to go into a full course load of sales.

The program also makes use of a special u-shaped classroom setup. The room is electronically hooked up to three other rooms and enables students to be videotaped during presentations in a conference room setting, Weilbaker said.

Senior marketing major Julie Conran said the program helped her to build confidence and approved her ability to take rejection.

She also said she enjoyed the role playing, golf outings, dinners and unity that she experienced with others in the program.

“The entire course was kind of based on thinking outside the box and coming up with new and creative ways to solve customer problems,” she said.

Weilbaker said females who are involved in the program earn extra benefits.

“There was significantly higher pay for the ladies that had taken the sales program than those who didn’t,” he said.

Conran agreed.

“I have seen a lot of opportunities for the females coming out of those classes,” she said.

Weilbaker said the program received certification in October 2002 from the Professional Society for Sales and Marketing Training. The certification stated that NIU’s program is providing the “best accepted practice of teaching sales and sales practices.”

Senior marketing major Brad Englin said the program helped him to see how things work in “the real world” and fine tuned his business skills.

“It gives me somewhere to start from and keep continuously improving,” he said. “It’s already paid me many rewards and should continue to do so in the future.”

Weilbaker is proud of the program.

“It helps [students] go up the learning curve so that when they get into business they are much more productive,” Weilbaker said. “That’s why businesses love them.”