Telemarketing for the Business School as a Sales Course Project

Abstract

Client-based projects provide a more comprehensive learning experience than other participation exercises in business school courses. Most client-based projects, however, share two basic disadvantages: changing clients each semester entails heavy work and constantly intense learning curves for the faculty involved, and extensive cold calling exposes students to a potentially high rate of rejection, which may discourage them from pursuing sales careers. This article describes a client-based telemarketing project that avoids these disadvantages by using the students' own business school as the client and prospects who have already indicated some interest in the school. Methodology and teaching considerations are discussed.