Campbell MBA students participated in the inaugural Rainmakers Virtual Sales Competition last week. More than 1500 students from more than 40 colleges and universities competed, demonstrating their sales prowess by selling to artificially intelligent animated customer bots in a digital forum.
The competition was nationwide with schools from New England to Illinois and Texas to California competing. Campbell students joined the competition as part of professor Michael Rodriguez’s Business Analytics course.
“We are surrounded by artificial intelligence and machine learning in our personal lives,” Rodriguez said. “It’s great to expose our students to opportunities to learn how AI can help us not only learn, but make us more efficient in business.”
Veterans Affairs grad assistant and MBA candidate James D. Ferrell was pleasantly surprised to learn that he placed in the top five percent, particularly since it was his first sales competition.
“It was a great learning experience and a fantastic opportunity to learn the world of sales virtually,” Ferrell said. “Rainmakers did an excellent job of setting me up for success with the tools they provided. I want to thank Dr. Rodriguez for setting this up for our class and I look forward to competing in future events and improving my skills and making Campbell proud.”
The response from Ferrell’s fellow Campbell competitors was overwhelmingly positive:
“Participating in the RNMKRS virtual sales competition was an interesting way to see how Artificial Intelligence can be used to benefit companies and employees through practicing customer interaction with an artificially intelligent animated customer,” said Peyton L. Derrow
“The pre-competition sales education materials and supporting webinars led by industry experts offered good guidance on how to successfully prepare for, initiate and manage a sales engagement with a prospect,” added Jeff Turnipseed. “Working with a real-world but simple example like Dell Rugged notebooks was helpful to make the competition more real while giving insight into how AI technology can be leveraged to scale sales training, measure outcomes and improve the AI technology used.”
The Lundy-Fetterman School of Business at Campbell University offers nine undergraduate majors, an MBA, a Masters in Trust and Wealth Management, and a forthcoming Masters in Accountancy (Fall 2020). The school features a Center for Financial Literacy and Economic Education, the BB&T Business Fellows Program, the First Citizens Wealth Management Center (supporting the nation’s only undergraduate program in Trust & Wealth Management), students successfully competing in regional and national competitions, a satellite office at Raleigh’s leading entrepreneurial hub – HQ Raleigh, and one of only eighteen PGA Golf Management programs in the country.