The Chicago-based Professional Society for Sales and Marketing (SMT) is sold on the professional sales area of study offered at NIU.

The society is so impressed that it made it the first such training certified by the organization.

“This places the [training] in the top 5 percent of schools across the nation,” SMT board member Renie McClay said.

Marketing department chair Denise Schoenbachler thinks the certification proves the quality of the education students are receiving.

“It’s an external evaluation of the quality of the program,” she said, “and it’s important to us that the validation has come from the industry.”

The SMT examined the curriculum, faculty and facilities offered by the marketing department before making a decision on certification.

Dan Weilbaker, an associate marketing professor, along with professor Rick Ridnour and instructor Ed Bratta, all have played an active role in the development of the training over the years.

Weilbaker believes the professional sales area of study has been ready for certification for a while, but was missing an important piece.

“We didn’t have to make any changes in our curriculum,” he said.

The Sales Training Suite is the highlight of the training services offered to marketing students.

The suite consists of mock offices and a conference room monitored by cameras and rigged for sound. This is where students can “role play” situations they may encounter in the business world while professors and students evaluate them from another room.

“It provides an atmosphere free of interruptions and distractions that can be the result of role playing in front of a classroom full of students,” Weilbaker said.

Ridnour thinks the suite is important to providing the students the opportunity to develop their skills.

“There is more reality, more of a sense of a business environment,” he said.

Bratta thinks the students are an important part in making the training a success.

“We have some real movers and shakers in these classes,” he said, when describing the type of students involved in the training.

Another reason for the success of the program has been the help of sales professionals on the Sales Advisory Board. These outside voices from the business world provide advice and guidance to the marketing department. Schoenbachler thinks their help is already starting to show.

“We have a lot of recruiters that come back and say the NIU students are ahead of the game,” she said.

Schoenbachler, Weilbaker, Ridnour and Bratta said they look forward to improving the sales training for students. They hope to continue to see more alumni return to share their experiences in the business world.